© 1975, 2012 by Marie Chapian and Robert Sadler

Published by Bethany House Publishers

11400 Hampshire Avenue South

Bloomington, Minnesota 55438

www.bethanyhouse.com

Bethany House Publishers is a division of

Baker Publishing Group, Grand Rapids, Michigan

www.bakerpublishinggroup.com

Ebook edition created 2011

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise—without the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.

ISBN 978-1-4412-7005-4

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress, Washington, DC.

Scripture quotations are from the King James Version of the Bible.

The story of Robert Sadler is true. A few names and certain incidents have been altered slightly to protect the privacy of individuals involved, but the authors have striven to maintain authenticity and accuracy in documenting this book.

Cover design by Charles Brock/Faceout Studio

“Come and dine,” the Master calleth,

“Come and dine”—

You can feast at Jesus’ table

All the ti—ime,

He who fed the multitude,

Turned the water into wine,

To the hungry He calleth now,

“Come and dine!”

—Charles B. Widmeyer & S. H. Bolton

For Stella

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright Page

Epigraph

Dedication

Preface

Part I: Slavery

1   2   3   4   5

6   7   8   9   10

11   12   13   14   15

16   17   18   19   20

Photo Gallery

Part II: Freedom

21   22   23   24   25

26   27   28   29   30

31   32   33   34

Part III: Ministry

35   36   37

38   39   40

About the Authors

Back Cover

Preface

Robert Sadler knew little or nothing of politics, literature, science, education, or the arts. His life and legacy prove that human greatness does not necessarily mean outstanding feats of brawn or brain, wealth, or worldly acumen. This is the story of a great man. Though he was little known in his lifetime, those whose lives he touched will never forget him. His story proves that a broken life can rise up out of the jaws of cruel injustice and suffering and go on to help, heal, and love others (including enemies) with peace and joy. Sadler was a humble man and a man of supernatural love and presence. He had endless compassion and mercy for all souls, no matter who or what they were.

Sadler was in his sixties when he felt ready to tell his life story in a book. He was not a big man, probably around five foot five or six in shoes; his head was bald with white tufts at the ears. His early life was painful for him to recall and talk about. I spent a year working on the book. I traveled with Sadler, along with my two toddlers; I photographed and interviewed dozens of people—asking questions, corroborating facts and details—and in the end, wrote well over a thousand pages, which I had to trim to its present size. We had no expectations for the book other than to tell a story that had to be told.

It’s been several years since I traveled the roads of the South, the Appalachians, and on up to Detroit and Canada researching and recording this story. I’ve never met anyone who exuded so much acceptance and kindheartedness as Robert Sadler, a man who walked a miracle life, a man without guile, a man who truly knew God. He taught me as a young writer more by his life than a million well-intended sermons ever could.

For this republication I have edited somewhat and included material and details left out of the first edition. A huge thanks to editors Kyle Duncan, Julie Smith, and Ellen Chalifoux for their vision and faith, and also to our first editorial team, Gary and Carol Johnson, Jeannie Mikkleson, and Kent Garborg. A grateful hug to my daughters, Christa and Liza, for encouragement and their loving memories of Robert Sadler and our travels with him.

Most of all, we are thankful for the generous and helpful assistance of those whose lives touched these pages: Janette Patterson, John and Lillian Sadler, Buck Moore, Connie and Alice Lee, Eugene and Josephine Mattison, Marilyn Rolf, Tennessee and John Henry Turner, Mary Webb, and Jacqueline Sadler.

I want to remind the reader that the Emancipation Proclamation had been signed in 1863 and Robert Sadler was born in 1911. The story begins in 1916, when he was five years old.

Marie Chapian

San Diego, CA

1

I had a big ache inside me as I walked down the street toward the mission and saw the men still asleep in corners and doorways. It was hot and still and flies buzzed around their faces. Soon they would be lined up against the walls of the buildings—stinking, sweating, worn, and broken, looking for a bottle, a fix, money for something to eat. I thanked the Lord that I wasn’t lying there with them. I could have been, you know.

We were gathering that morning for our Sunday service. I watched the little congregation file into the small mission, one by one. Young children sat quietly on folding chairs, dressed in their Sunday best, holding Bibles and paper fans. We greeted one another with smiles and hugs and then sat waiting for the service to begin. There was a feeling of excitement in all of us—not that this was any special meeting, but we always expected the Lord to touch and bless us when we met together, and He never let us down.

I went to my place at the portable organ in the front of the room. As I looked out at their faces, there was a rush of gladness and love in my heart for each of them. As we began to praise the Lord together, tears rolled down some of their cheeks. In spite of the heat they were comfortable with God, who had saved them and given them hope and new lives.

Sister Patterson, God bless her, lifted her face as she sang in her soft voice. This large, strong woman shook with emotion. She had grown up in Anderson, right near this mission. Since she was old enough to talk, she had worked in white people’s homes. Now she also helped out in the mission, besides raising her five children.

The name of the mission is Compassion House. It is located on Church Street in Anderson, South Carolina. I was born in Anderson. It was also in Anderson that I was sold into slavery. Yes, slavery.

But I was telling you about Compassion House. When I first opened its doors in 1970, I asked the Lord to help me to live up to that name. Often it wasn’t easy. When you’re dealing with drunks, alcoholics, prostitutes, pimps, and drug addicts, you get used to being conned, propositioned, and robbed.

There was a pink curtain separating the front meeting room and the back room where I cooked and slept. In the back room now was a young man with one lung and sclerosis, sleeping off a drunk. He told me he wouldn’t take another drink as long as he lived if I’d let him stay with me, but he had promised me the same thing a dozen times. We could hear him coughing while we sang. I went back to the cot, where he lay crumpled up in a ball.

“You in bad pain, son?”

“Naw. I’m jes fine.”

“Mebbe we oughter get you to a hospital.”

“I ain’t goin to no hospital!”

“All right, if that’s what you want—”

“If I die, man, I ain’t dyin in no hospital ward. Uh uh! I’m dying with a bottle of whiskey in one hand and a woman in the other, and God help what’s in between!”

“You don’t have to die, Evans. You can live if you want to.”

The young man looked up at me. “Preacher,” he said, “godda hell.”

I sat on the edge of the cot and began to pray. His young, tough face was thin, worn like an old man’s. His body was emaciated. When I had finished praying I noticed a photograph on the floor beside him. It must have fallen out of his pocket. I picked it up and held it in my hands.

“Who’s this little child, son?”

“Hit’s my daughter.”

I stared at the photograph of the smiling, round-cheeked girl. I was startled for a moment. It looked just like my baby sister, Ella. Lord, it was almost sixty years ago. . . .

I could see little Ella sitting on Mama’s lap. Mama was singing to her. I was curled up alongside them, and in the quiet, hot shadows of our cabin that summer afternoon, it seemed as if the whole world was singing. Lord, Mama had a way of making things like that.

“Isn’t that something? You being the daddy of this fine child!”

The boy grunted.

“You know something, Evans? It look just like my own baby sister. It’s her likeness sure enough.” Sixty years ago . . . Lord, Lord.

Evans grunted again and cursed. I handed him the photograph. “Yusuh, a fine little child. You can be mighty proud.”

“Godda hell, preacher.”

The meeting was longer than usual that morning. I preached about forgiveness; what joy and power there was in it. I knew what I was talking about. After the last song had been sung and we had a time of fellowship with one another, it was early afternoon.

When the people were gone, I sat alone in the empty room with only the sound of Evans’s heavy breathing coming from the cot in the back. I would have to take him to the hospital.

I went to the back room and stood beside him. “Come on, Evans, we’re going to the hospital.”

“I ain’t goin’ to no hospital!”

I said nothing. I just stood there next to him. He looked at me and then suddenly he seemed startled. He quivered a little and sat up quickly. “OK, Sadler, OK.”

I got Evans to the emergency room and they admitted him at once. He was pretty well known around there. “The preacher carried me here,” he told the doctor. “They ain’t nothin wrong with me. Preacher got a way of making a man do jes what he don’t wanna do, specially with that big old shiny light of his.”

“What light are you talking about, Evans?”

Evans’s eyes narrowed. “Well, when you look at me with a great big ole shiny ball bright nuff to blind a man all around you like that, what am I supposed to do?”

“If you saw something bright and shiny, Evans, you was seein the Lord and not me.” I gave his arm a squeeze. “I don’t want to see you dyin for the devil. I want to see you alive. Alive and livin for God.”

I walked to my car that afternoon praying God would touch Evans and keep him alive. It burdened me to see a man wasting himself when he could have a rich and fulfilling life as a child of God. I thanked the Lord for getting him to the hospital.

Back at the mission I sat quietly thinking. That photograph of Evans’s daughter, who looked so much like my little sister, stuck with me. So many thoughts twirled in my head, I didn’t know how to sort them out. I wanted to remember little Ella’s voice, hear her laugh. I tried to think back as far as I could remember—think on things I had long ago buried and let stay buried. There were things I had never told anyone. Things I didn’t want to remember. Maybe now was the time for remembering, for telling. That picture sure looked like Ella. I thought I had forgotten, but no, I hadn’t.

Help me remember it, Lord, so I can tell it just the way it was.

Lord, help me remember . . .

2

A streak of sunlight shone on Ella’s face and on her dusty corn-rowed hair as she laughed and wriggled in Mama’s lap. She was two years old that day. Mama had saved up and bought some fresh fruit from the white folks’ fruit stand about a mile down the road, a pear and a peach for everybody. We had eaten the fruit happily and eagerly for breakfast with the whole family. There were eleven of us children, though all were not living at home then, and I was the tenth.

We laughed as Mama tickled Ella’s toes and kissed us both. Her white teeth shone as she laughed and sang to us. She was the warmth and brightness of our lives.

Our birthday fun together soon ended when Father’s large figure appeared in the doorway. He was over six feet tall and his eyes always had a little bit of rage in them. Whenever he appeared, we children had a way of disappearing. We were never sure what kind of mood he’d be in. This day he was in a bad mood and Ella and I scurried outside. We could hear him in the cabin cursing and yelling at Mama. We knew there’d be no more singing that night and Ella’s birthday would not be mentioned again.

Our small three-room shanty was on a large plantation south of Anderson, South Carolina, about a quarter of a mile off the road. Our cabin was built of pine board and leaned slightly to one side. Its wooden window frames had no screens or glass, and inside there were no ceiling or floor coverings. During the day we could see the chickens running underneath the house and at night we could see the stars through the boards of the roof. We had a barn of unpainted wood for our mule and buggy, a chicken coop, and a pigpen for the pig, when we had one.

Mama cooked over the fireplace at one end of the kitchen. There was a long wooden table with a bench on either side in the center of the room. The straight-backed chair Father sat in was in one corner, Mama’s rocking chair was by the fireplace, and along the wall was the cupboard with wooden doors that swung open. An old wooden box and the butter churn made up the rest of our furniture. Pots and pans hung from nails on the wall. Even with two windows in the room, it was never very bright. The sun seemed to shine in for a few feet and then stop, like it had better things to do.

“I’m hongry!” my father snapped. We could hear Mama’s quick movements getting his supper on a plate. There was hot corn bread baking in the ashes near the fire and fatback frying in the skillet. She rarely answered Father back, even if he was in a good mood.

Ella and I were sitting close together burying our toes in the dirt alongside the house when we heard a loud smack from inside. Then there was a tumbling, and we held our breath. Father had hit Mama and knocked her down. We crawled under the house to be outside his reach when he came out of the house. As I sat in the darkness underneath the house, I fought tears of fright and anger. Even though I was just a small child, I wanted to jump up and defend Mama.

It was not long before Father had finished eating and was fixing to leave again.

We could hear Mama pleading with him, “Please stay home, honey. Don’t go out again tonight. . . .” When he went out his pay went with him. His curses rang through the air, and soon he stomped out of the cabin and was walking up the road. That night in our bed on the floor we could hear Mama’s soft crying coming from the room next to ours where she slept. By morning Father still wasn’t home and there was no food for the table.

The days and nights continued like that—Father ranting and Mama crying. On the rare nights he stayed home, he’d be drunk.

Two of my brothers had moved into town to find jobs, my sisters Ada and Janey were hired out, my brothers Leroy and Johnny were day workers on the plantation where we lived, and Pearl and Margie helped Mama work the land we rented and with the work at home. With everybody working, that left Ella and me to ourselves most of the time.

We usually played together in the dirt outside our cabin, or we’d play near wherever Mama was working. In the autumn when most of the family was picking cotton for the white farmer in his fields, Ella and I played at the edge of the field Mama was in. It was a happy sight to see Mama coming for us at noontime. We’d go home and she’d cook the noon meal and then return to the field until quitting time. Sometimes we’d eat lunch in the field, and always, no matter where it was, Mama bowed her head and thanked the Lord for the food. One day as we sat at the edge of a small grove of trees eating our lunch, Mama looked at me soberly and said, “Robert, some day you learn to read, hear? Then you set down and read to me from the Bible.”

“Yes, Mama,” I said.

It was nearly hopeless for me to learn to read. Not many of the blacks in our area ever got a chance to go to school. But the way Mama was looking at me, I knew it was important and that I should take her words seriously.

There were other workers’ children playing with us while we waited in the fields for our mamas. Many of the families who sharecropped worked their own land as well as the white man’s they rented from. That was one of the reasons we couldn’t go to school.

In the mornings everyone in our cabin was up before daybreak. The older children got up and fed the mule. Mama fed the pig and the chickens. Then on certain days there’d be the washing done outside in the big pots in the yard. Everybody would come in for breakfast by sunup, and then they’d be leaving for the field, where they worked all day.

My sisters Pearl and Margie especially wanted to go to school. They begged and begged Mama to find a way to let them to go school. One day after they had done their morning work, Mama announced she had made arrangements for them to go to the little Negro school about two and a half miles away. My sisters were so excited they danced and jumped around the cabin until I thought we might fall through the cracks in the floor. There was much singing and laughter in the cabin that morning as they got ready.

Each sister had one dress, and after they finished their work, they’d stick their heads in the rain barrel outside and then rush inside and put on their dresses. I watched them hurry out of the house and begin the two-and-a-half-mile walk down the road to school. Mama would holler after them, “Be sure’n be home about 10:30 so’s to knock down cotton stalk!”

In a few hours they’d be home, and the first thing they would do would be to wash their dresses in the basin and hang them over the chair to dry before the fire until they’d take the smoothing iron the next morning and iron them for wearing. They came home with stories of danger and adventure nearly every day.

“The big white school bus fly by so fast we almost got runned over.” They’d be grey with dust, their hair and clean dresses ruined with dirt. “Mama, why they do us like that?”

“Girls, listen to me. There ain’t no dirt can grieve us til they buries us. And when that day come, we rise up on the glory side—so there ain’t no use to grumblin. Go wash up now.”

One morning they came home crying so terribly I thought maybe the white children had beat on them. It was worse than that. They had been walking up the dusty road the two and a half miles to school when the white farmer we rented from approached Father.

“Whar those chillren of yors goin, Jim?”

“They’s goin to school, jes like yors.”

“Oh no they ain’t, Jim. My chillren is goin to school, yor chillren is goin to the field!”

From the look on his face, Father knew that he’d better send his children to the man’s field. Though they worked for nothing, he knew if they didn’t some mighty bad things could happen to him.

“Git out the field, chillren,” he said.

The crying lasted about a week. They never went back to school again because soon they were doing Mama’s work too. She didn’t have much energy, and she seemed to be having trouble catching her breath. Some days she could hardly get out of bed. But she went to work in the field nearly every day.

Ella and I played in the clearing during the day with the other children too young to work the fields, waiting for our mamas to come for us. One day when we saw her coming for us, her forehead and fine high cheekbones shone with sweat. Her small but strong body stooped low and her walk was slow. As she drew near to us a broad smile spread across her face. We ran to her arms and kissed her wet face. Mama’s health was getting worse. Her breathing was more labored and she looked like she was in pain. I began to feel protective of her, and I worked hard at cleaning, sweeping, and feeding the chickens. My older sisters were working with Mama in the field so it was just Ella and me in the house.

One night Leroy and Johnny moved out of the cabin to join the other brothers and get jobs. Mama said good-bye to them tearfully. As she embraced them, she looked as though she wanted to tell them something—something special, something that would make sense of everything and give it all a purpose and meaning. But instead she kissed them each quickly and said, “The Lord watch over you.”

When they were gone, and the house was still, Mama sang to us. It was as though she was praying. She was part Indian and usually wore her long black hair in braids tied around her head. This night her hair hung loose and fuzzy around her shoulders, and I thought she looked like an angel. The other children must have thought so too, for we all sat real quiet, watching and listening as Mama sang to us. We joined in, too, and sang until it was time to go to bed.

Jesus, shine your light, shine shine shine . . .

As tender and loving as Mama was, Father was mean. His disposition was growing worse and worse. He came home that night drunk as usual. I heard him call for Mama. I crawled off the bed and watched from the shadows. He was teetering on his feet and in an ugly mood. Mama got out of bed and came into the kitchen where he stood. Without a word he raised his arm and struck her a blow across the head, and she was sent sprawling to the floor.

I ran across the room with a scream and grabbed a stick. I leaped at my father and beat his legs with all my might. “Stop it! Stop it! Stop it!” I screamed at him. “Don’t you hit Mama!”

Before I knew it, he had me dangling from his hand in the air. Then with a howl he hurled me the length of the cabin into the wall, knocking me unconscious.

Mama fussed over me for a couple of days, and I ached and hurt everywhere. She was afraid something had been broken inside my head because of the lump and bruises.

Mama’s health continued to grow worse. By cotton-picking time she was unable to rise up out of the bed. She cried often for her children. I would hear her in the bed as I brought in the wood in the morning.

“O Lord, have mercy. Have mercy. Take care of my chillren, Lord.”

“Where you goin, Mama?” I would ask her.

“Son, you gonna have to be mighty strong, hear? Yor Mama’s goin home soon.”

“Goin home? But you are home, Mama.”

“No, son. Mama means home in heaven. With the Lord—that’s real home.”

“You leavin us, Mama?”

“I believe so, son.”

She had that look in her eye again—that look as though she had something very important to say. Something that would explain everything. Like why Father was so cruel, and why things were the way they were—things like that.

“Lord, have mercy,” she said instead.

I was sweeping out the cabin one afternoon and it began to rain. We dreaded rain because it poured in on everything, and the cabin was like a sieve. Work in the fields went on rain or shine. Mama lay on her bed with the rain dripping down on her pillow by her head. I stood near her bed watching her. She lay wheezing in the darkness of the afternoon, and I was afraid she might have been serious about leaving us and going to her real home. The cabin had been so gloomy since she took sick that there was little joy anywhere. Even Ella, who was always happy and laughing, became grave and sullen. There was no singing anymore without Mama to sing with us, and one day followed the other like a string of cold stones. The neighbor ladies prepared hot onion and potato soup and sarsaparilla and sage tea for Mama. They laid long strands of green and brown grasses on her chest, and they prayed.

It rained for three days. Father took Janey, Pearl, and Margie to the field with him, and Ella and I stayed in the cabin with Mama until they came home at night. Ella got a fever and had to stay in bed, so I sat by myself on the step watching the rain and waiting for Mama to wake up.

At the end of the third day of rain, I heard Mama calling for Father from her bed. “Jim . . . Jim . . .” Her voice was weak. I ran to her. “. . . Your father, honey. Git your father.” She was gasping like she had been running hard and couldn’t catch her breath.

“Yes, Ma’am,” I said and raced out of the cabin to get my father. When I found him in the barn bent over a broken wagon wheel I shouted almost hysterically, “Mama! Mama! It’s Mama! She wants you! She’s real sick, Father! She’s callin for you!” He didn’t even look up as he worked. Finally he muttered, “I can’t come, boy. Gotta finish this here busted axle.”

By the time Father arrived at Mama’s bedside that evening, she had slipped into unconsciousness. She never spoke or opened her eyes again. In another day she was dead.

The days which followed were a daze. The funeral was held in a little church on the hill about a mile away. I saw her lying in the box they had built, and I wanted to scream, “Mama, get up. Get up! Mama, why you lyin there like that?”

The only one of the family who wasn’t at the funeral was Ella. She was still sick. A friend of Mama’s sat with her during the service giving her catnip tea on a spoon. The little church was crowded with Mama’s friends and some of our relatives. My older brothers were there, brothers I had hardly even seen. I stared at them, wondering what life off the farm could be like. Did they know how to read and write? There were many things I wanted to ask them, but as it was I didn’t get a chance to speak with them at all because they left right after the service. I don’t think they were even aware that I was their little brother. They didn’t even wait for the lemonade and sugar cookies that came later.

“Yoll eat aplenty, Robert,” my sister Margie told me. “It’ll be a long time before we see cookies agin!” I took two cookies and some lemonade and brought them home to Ella.

“Ella, how long you gonna lay up in that bed?”

“I dunno.”

“Well, Mama’s daid now.”

“I know it. What’re you fixin to do?”

I looked at her face and was startled to see how thin it had become. She was small for her age to begin with, but now she looked so tiny and so helpless. I felt panic rise within me.

“Ella!” I shouted.

“What you shoutin on, Robert?”

“Are you gonna die, Ella? Are you gonna die?”

Ella’s condition didn’t get any better. Margie gave her what was left of Mama’s cabbage juice tonic; she made a paste of hot clay and cabbage leaves and spread it on her, but she didn’t get well. Soon she couldn’t eat anything, and it was only one month after my mother died that Ella was dead, too.

All I had in the whole world was gone—Mama, the light of our life, and now my only friend, Ella.

Father worked extra jobs as a basket maker and a blacksmith, but every cent he made he spent on liquor, and there were days when there was not a crumb of food in the house. One day Margie and I were coming back from the mill with the sack of cornmeal in the back of the buggy, and we saw an old apple core on the side of the road. I held the reins and Margie made a dive for the apple core, and we ate it right there. The rest of the way home we looked hungrily for more apple cores.

Margie and Pearl were good to me. They played with me, talked to me, put me to sleep in the bed with them, and tried to show me love. Margie brought singing back into the cabin, and at night we would sing around the fire; or else, lying in the bed, we’d sing to the moon peeking through the boards of the roof.

Father was home less and less. Whenever we did see him he would be drunk. Then one day he came home and announced that he was fixing to take himself a new wife, so that spring Father, Pearl, Margie, and I left our little cabin and moved to the north side of Anderson to live in our new mama’s home. It was a little nicer than our cabin, but it, too, was unpainted and had no finished ceiling, floor coverings, window glass, or screens, and the yard was grey dirt. Standing beside the porch were two boys, younger than us. The thing that interested me the most was that both children were fat. If they were fat, then maybe we would get some good food to eat.

“Them’s Rosie’s chillren,” Father told us. “Yor new brothers.”

Our life in Rosie’s shanty with her two children was not what we expected. Rosie hated us. She pulled Margie’s hair, screamed at Pearl, and would hit us at any time. While she ate at the one table in the house with her own children, we had to eat our food on our laps in the corner. She said there wasn’t room for us.

The hopes of getting good food or enough to eat were quickly squelched. We got only what they didn’t want. Some days we would get just one bowl of grits. We were hungrier at our stepmother’s house than we had been before.

One night when Rosie had cooked up some chicken backs and corn bread for a church dinner, Margie and Pearl ran into the kitchen, tossed some pieces of chicken into their aprons, and ran out again. We ate the chicken backs behind the shed, bones and all. Rosie threw a fit and told Father that night that we were thieves. We were outside, but we could hear her screaming at Father about us.

“Lazy, thas what! Don’t do no work! Now they stealin food as well. Since you brought them three no-accounts into mah house, it’s been jes trouble.”

We were certain that Father wouldn’t listen to her lies. He knew we were good children and hard workers, and surely he would figure out that we took the food because she wasn’t feeding us.

But when he called us in to him, we could see right away he had sided with Rosie. One by one he whupped us with the buggy trace for stealing.

It got worse. Father began staying out all night drinking. When he’d come home, he’d be so drunk that he would sleep all day. He started keeping company with other women, and Rosie took her fury out on us. She would beat us for no reason whatsoever.

“They don’t mind me nohow, Jim, hear? They don’t mind me nohow! They good-for-nothin no-accounts, each one of em, them two girls and that useless boy.”

As he listened to Rosie’s lying accusations, Father began to form a plan in his mind. It was plowing time. One terrible day he came into the room where my sisters and I slept together and woke us up, ordering us to get into the wagon outside. We quickly scrambled out of bed into the cool morning air and climbed into the wagon, never dreaming what was in store for us. In fact, we thought it was a special treat to be receiving any attention from Father. Maybe we were going to town to pick up seed; maybe we were going to the blacksmith’s where Father worked. We were so glad to be getting away from Rosie and her two boys that we didn’t really care where we were going.

Little was said during our ride down the Abbeville Road, through Anderson and on south. The morning air was cool and damp, and my sisters and I huddled together in the corner of the wagon, bouncing against the rough boards as we rolled across the deep ruts and holes in the road. Wherever Father was going, he was mighty intent on it. His face was grim and his back stiff and straight, like he maybe needed to belch.

Soon we passed the cabin where all of us had been born. I held my breath as I looked at the old deserted shanty. Margie and Pearl looked as though they might cry, but they held their chins stiff. The door of the shanty was open, and inside it was dark and empty. How I longed to jump from the wagon and run down the path into Mama’s arms. If only Ella’s little round face would appear from around the side of the sloping porch, and I could run to her and squeal and laugh again and then sit at Mama’s knee and hear her sing to us. As we passed over the top of the hill, I began to cry. Pearl pinched my arm in case Father would turn and give me a lick for crying.

We bumped along the road without a word for more than an hour. Finally Pearl said to Father, “Where we goin?” He sat almost motionless on the small seat at the front of the wagon. He did not so much as whisk a hair at her question. His silence meant don’t ask questions.

We grew hungry as the morning wore on, and a little sore from the bumpy ride. Still, we said nothing as we watched the South Carolina countryside slowly pass by us, the heat rising up from the earth like hot fingers. Finally, we left the main road and turned into a long driveway. On top of a hill was a large, beautiful house, the biggest I had ever seen. I wondered why Father was turning in here. It wasn’t the home of anybody we knew, and obviously it belonged to a white man. We saw several shanties near the back of the property like our cabin. Father halted the mule, got out of the wagon, and started for the back door.

“Why we stoppin here? Who lives in that big house?” I asked. Margie and Pearl didn’t answer, for those same questions were in their minds.

The dogs in the yard barked as Father made his way to the back door. He took off his large brimmed hat and held it in his hand. He looked tall and shabby standing there on the step; his black hair and the dark skin of his face shone in the early morning sun. Soon the door was opened by a white man as tall as Father. They talked for a while and then Father turned and pointed to us. He turned several times, pointing to us, and then he and the white man went inside the house. When they came out, Father ordered us to get out of the wagon. Margie and Pearl jumped down first and then helped me down. We stood in our bare feet on the cold ground staring at the white man, Mr. Tom Billings, a cotton farmer.

“Y’say the boy is only five years old?” the man asked.

“Yessuh. Five years old, suh,” my father answered.

“Hmmm . . . I don’t like em so young.”

“Take em all or take none,” my father said.

The man narrowed his eyes, then said, “OK, I’ll take em.”

“Git over there by the house and stand still!” he ordered us roughly. We did as we were told and when we turned around, Father was in the wagon and spiraling it back the way we had come. I called out to him, but he didn’t turn his head. Then Pearl called, “Father, wait! Don’t leave us!” and she ran after the wagon. It was no use. Father didn’t even look at her. His fierce gaze was on the road ahead of him, and he didn’t pay any mind to our cries and pleas.

The wagon disappeared down the driveway and onto the main road. Pearl and Margie and I stood trembling against the side of the house, our feet digging into the cold earth. It was spring of 1917 and my sisters and I had just been sold as slaves.

3

Margie and Pearl held onto my hands so tight it hurt. When I looked up at them, they were both crying. The white man stood in front of us, looking at us with cold, hard eyes. Then, without a word, he disappeared into the kitchen. In a moment a large black woman hurried out of the door and bustled over to where we were cowering against the side of the house. She reached for our hands and said in a soft voice, “You chillren come along.” Hesitantly, we followed her. The sun was shining hot overhead, and I could hear the sound of birds twittering in the trees.

“My name is Sarah, what’s yours?” the soft-spoken woman asked. Margie told her our names, and in the clamoring heat, I began to shiver and tremble. Pearl put her arms around me and held me against her knees.

“You’ll help me with the washing,” Sarah told my sisters. “And what’s this?” she said, looking at me. “How old is this here child?”

“Five years, Ma’am,” Margie answered.

“Can’t he talk?”

“Yes, Ma’am,” Margie said.

“Well?” She looked at me, waiting, like I was supposed to say something. I couldn’t get my mouth to open. She bent down and put her face next to mine. “Chile, can you sweep with a broom?” I nodded dumbly.

“Yes, Ma’am, he can sweep, sure enough,” Margie said. Sarah straightened, handed me a broom, and explained that the porch had to be swept and kept clean every day. Then she took my sisters with her inside the house. Margie squeezed my hand. “We’ll be back, Robert, hear?”

I watched them leave me, and then standing alone on the large wooden porch, I began to cry. I was afraid I’d get a whupping for not doing what I was told, but I was too scared to move. When I turned around, a blond-haired young lady dressed in a pink and white dress was standing in the doorway. I stared at her, frightened, and she stared back at me, amused.

“Who are you?” she asked.

I tried to answer, but no words came out.

“Well, I hope you can work better’n you can talk,” she said with a little giggle as she brushed past me and out the door.

I watched her through my tears and saw her climb into a buggy drawn by a fine brown horse that a black man was driving. Where was my father? Why did he leave us here?

After what seemed like hours, Margie and Pearl came through the porch following Sarah. They carried large bundles of laundry in their arms. I cried out in relief when I saw them, but when Margie saw that I hadn’t swept yet, she snapped, “Get busy, hear? Sweep this porch!” They followed Sarah out into the backyard, and I could see them as they pounded the clothes with the paddle on the three-legged battling bench.

Margie’s sharp words had their effect on me, and I held onto the crooked handle of the big straw broom like it was a person. I began sweeping, pushing the broom back and forth like Mama taught me. I could hear her soft voice, “Ain’t nobody knows the corners of a house like a old broom,” and she’d laugh.

“Do that mean the broom be smarter ’n people, Mama?”

“Law, child. I spect so!” and she’d laugh again. I hurriedly swept the porch so I could join my sisters in the yard. The washing would take most of the morning and early afternoon to finish. The dirt had to be paddled out of the clothes and then they were boiled in soapy water in the big black iron pots. I’d get to stir the clothes with a big stick. Then they had to be wrenched three times and finally hung up on the clotheslines to dry. Back home Mama hung our clothes on the brush outside our cabin to dry so I got used to the smell of chokecherry and dogwood against my skin.

Later I saw the blond-haired young lady again, and I stared at her with wonder. I had never seen a sight like her before. Sarah saw me and pulled me around facing the other direction.

“What you starin at, boy?”

“Nothunma’am.”

“Keep it that-a-way, hear?”

“Yezmam.”

The day continued and so did my confusion. That night, huddled between my sisters on the floor of Sarah’s cabin, we all cried ourselves to sleep.

The days wore on. I cried a lot and kept waiting for Father to come for us. It was cotton planting time, and almost all of the slaves were working in the fields. Margie and Pearl were taking care of the slaves’ young children as well as helping Sarah in the Big House. I was given jobs such as sweeping, carrying trash, feeding chickens, chasing cows, and kitchen work.

I discovered who the lady in the pink and white dress was. She was Miss Billie, Tom Billings’s fifteen-year-old daughter. She took a liking to my sister Pearl, who was thirteen. She had Pearl comb her hair and tend to her wardrobe and personal needs. If it weren’t for her, Margie and Pearl would have been sent to the fields to work, and I’d have been all alone in the Big House.

One day Pearl was heating irons on the stove to iron Miss Billie’s dresses, and I was standing nearby watching her.

“How old is Robert?” Miss Billie asked Pearl. “He was five June last, Ma’am.”

Miss Billie’s eyes grew wide. “He’s young to be separated from his mama, isn’t he?”

“His mama be dead, Ma’am.”

“But he has a daddy—?”

“Yes, Ma’am.”

Miss Billie stared at me and I shrank back. I had learned not to stare at white people.

“Do you like it here, boy?” she asked me.

I didn’t know what to answer. If I said no, I might get a whupping. I stared back at her, speechless. Then I began to cry.

“Oh, he must miss his mama!” Miss Billie exclaimed. Pearl didn’t say a word.

Miss Billie reached her hand out to me and said, “Come here, honey.” She took my hand and walked me into a long, narrow pantry where she opened a big jar and gave me a chocolate cookie with pink frosting.

“Thenkyoumam,” I mumbled, and took a small bite. I had never tasted anything so delicious in my whole life.

As the weeks passed, Miss Billie grew more and more distressed at my being there and often would complain to her father. “It ain’t right!” she would tell him. Finally she threatened to run away if he would not take me back to my home. He told her to hush up and mind herself. Margie and Pearl were horrified at the idea of our being separated, but they said nothing.

The Billings family had few guests; but one day in early summer, some of their friends from Hartwell, Georgia, came to visit. The house slaves had been busy preparing for their arrival—scrubbing, polishing, waxing, and washing. The grounds were cleaned, mowed, and trimmed. When their horse pulled the buggy up in the driveway, a Negro man stood waiting to help them and tend to the horse. As I watched them enter the house in a flurry of chatter and excitement, I didn’t realize that these jolly people would bring another tragedy into my life.

Margie, who was just fourteen, had been a hard worker both inside and outside the house. She was strong and they worked her like a mule. She worked from sunup until sundown without a complaint. She was working in the Big House while the visitors from Hartwell were staying there. Mrs. Billings, a large, stern-faced woman, boasted about her new servants to the visitors. She called for Margie and showed them what a fine buy her husband had made when he purchased her.

“Can’t read or write,” she boasted. “That’s how to keep em. She’s a mighty strong one, too.”

“And who is the little niggerboy?” the plump, jowly friend asked.

“Tell her your name, boy,” Mrs. Billings ordered.

“. . . Wobber.”

Mrs. Billings jolted upright, enraged. “Robert what, boy?”

“Wobber Sadder,” I mumbled.

Mrs. Billings’s face went red. I had humiliated her in front of the people she was trying to impress. She called us out of the room, excusing herself to her guests. On the other side of the door, she bent down and hissed, “You say Ma’am when you talk to me, boy!” She grabbed me by the ear. “I ought to have you whupped to teach yoll a lesson! Now how do you talk to me?”

“. . . Ma’am, Ma’am,” I stammered.

“Didn’t yor mama teach you yor manners?”

“No, Ma’am, yezmam.”

She rolled her eyes. “Is this here chile ignornt, Margie?”

“Yezmam, but I’ll teach him, Ma’am.”

“I don’t think so, girl. Now git out, both of you!”

“Yes, Miz Billings, Ma’am,” Margie said, taking me by the hand.

After we had left the room, Mrs. Billings sold Margie to her lady friend. The next morning after our breakfast of molasses drizzled over corn bread in Miss Sarah’s shanty, Margie was called to the Big House. Pearl and I went with her. We played a little game as we walked in the early morning light up the damp path. Walk two steps, hop one step, jump two steps, hop one step.

When we got to the clearing, we saw the buggy hitched up and the visitors climbing into it. Then Mr. Billings called Margie. “You belong to these people now, girl. Git in,” he ordered, and he pointed to the back of the buggy. Margie cried out in alarm. “Lord, have mercy!”

“Git in, I said!”

We followed Margie to the edge of the buggy. Her eyes were wide with fright. She reached down to hug me.

“Take care of Pearl, Robert honey; she ain’t as strong as me.” Her voice was all broken up.

Pearl and I began to cry. “No! No!” Pearl screamed. “Don’t take my sister! Don’t take her!”

I felt a hard blow across my head and shoulders, and I fell tumbling to the ground. I looked up in time to see Mr. Billings push Pearl back as she, too, rolled to the ground.

The buggy jerked forward, and soon it was moving down the driveway. Margie’s face was pale with pain. “Please, Robert . . .” I heard her call, “Please be a good boy. . . .” When she saw our sister sobbing and running after her, she cried, “Pearl! Pearl! No!” The lady in the front of the buggy turned and ordered, “Hush up now! Hush up, hear?”

“Git back to the kitchen, girl,” Mr. Billings told Pearl. “Understand I cain’t be feeding three more mouths, got enough to take care of as tis. And you, boy, git over here and sweep up this here yard!”

In the weeks that followed I received many slaps for crying. Master Billings often whupped me with a peach tree switch. It stung terrible. I could hardly do the tasks I was given. Something else happened to me which added to my misery. I had trouble talking and pronouncing words. I couldn’t speak right, but up until the day I arrived at the Billings Plantation I was hardly aware of it. Nobody had ever made anything of it before and so it didn’t bother me. Now, however, I completely lost my speech. I could not form any words at all, and when I did try to talk, it came out all garbled and nobody could understand me. I became the “backward nigger boy,” and it made Mr. Billings angry just to look at me. He lost good money when he took me on with my sisters.

Billie Billings continued to beg her father for my release. It seemed to cause her particular distress to see a five-year-old boy cowering in corners and crying all the time, even though I was a slave boy and hardly worth her attention.

Pearl was working in the kitchen all the time now, where she remained all during the summer months. She worked from sunup until late at night, and I was able to be with her most of the time. I was glad she wasn’t sent to the fields. Nearly every night I’d fall asleep on the floor waiting for her. She’d carry my sleeping body home to Miss Sarah’s shanty and then she’d go back to work.

Pearl was a frail girl in the first place, and now she seemed to be more thin and more worn looking. One morning when she was cleaning the kitchen after the white people’s breakfast, Miss Billie came in, looked at her, and said, “Pearl, you set down a spell; you look plumb tuckered!”

“Thank you, Miss Billie, Ma’am,” Pearl answered, “but ah’s fine, jes fine.”

Master Billings happened to overhear Miss Billie’s words, and he burst into the kitchen and yelled at Pearl. “You get busy, you hear? Don’t you pay no mind to settin!” He ordered Miss Billie to her room, and we could hear their voices in hot argument as Pearl trembled and worked and I helped her in the kitchen. We were scared, because when Miss Billie fought with her father about us it made him so angry we feared he’d whup us in revenge.

I hated him so much I was afraid my heart might stop beating. I wanted desperately to tell Pearl how much I hated him, but I couldn’t form the words in my mouth. It was as though I had a clump of weeds growing on my tongue and there was no room for words to get out. Hate. Hate. I hate! I hate! I hate! If only I could say it.

Pearl rarely sang to me or held me anymore. It seemed I was more often in her way than anything else. “Robert, bring this inside,” “Robert, sweep the porch,” or “Robert, wash this”—never “Robert, honey, come here and let me love you,” like she used to.

One hot afternoon when she was preparing the food for the white folks’ dinner, she told me to bring a bowl of fresh fruit to the dining room table. I picked it up and it was heavy. “Don’t drop it, hear?” she snapped at me. The minute she said the words, my hands slipped and the bowl of fruit fell to the floor. Glass shattered and the fruit rolled in all directions. Pearl flew at me and hit me hard upside the head. I was so stunned and hurt, I wailed helplessly. Then I ran out of the kitchen and across the yard and hid behind the smokehouse. I heard Miss Sarah calling me. “Robert, Robert! Where are you, boy?” I held my breath. I heard her mutter, “Poor chile is dumb, can’t talk. They done beat the sense out of him.”

Pearl didn’t get back to the shanty until almost dawn. I had been waiting all night for her. She lay down on the floor beside me, and without a word turned to face the wall. Her body shook badly and I reached out for her. “Peh, Peh—” I called, pulling her arm. She did not turn around to me, and I could hear her softly crying until she finally fell asleep.

I could not understand Pearl’s coldness toward me. It hurt and confused me. A few days later Miss Sarah took me to her knee and said, “Honey, don’t you fret yourself over Sister, hear? She be wanting you to grow up now so’s you can learn how to take care of yorself. She be afraid you gonna stay a baby, an if she be sent away, what’d happen to you?”

Pearl’s rejection of me just made me cling to her all the more. I held her skirts while she worked; I cried and whined beside her all day long. Miss Billie would often find us together in this way. Pearl would be trying to do her work, and I would be clinging to her skirts and whimpering. If Pearl would wash Miss Billie’s hair or help her with her bath, I’d be nearby, sniffling.

Then one morning early in September, after we had been living at the Billings Plantation for about five months, Pearl and I were summoned to get into the buggy which was hitched up in the driveway. This time Pearl swooped me up in her arms and held on to me for dear life.

“I won’t let them take you away from me, chile, I won’t!” she cried. “They have to kill me fust!” She held me with all her strength. Her thin young face was fierce.

Master Billings strode out of the house and climbed into the driver’s seat. “Git in!” he ordered. “Both of ye!” We did as he commanded, and Pearl never let her grip loosen on me. It was as though she were hanging on to life itself.

We bumped along the driveway, then turned on Abbeville Road toward Anderson. I looked back at the Billings Plantation and saw my last glimpse of Miss Sarah as she came running to the driveway to watch us leave.

Pearl held me tight and kept her gaze fixed on the back of Master Billings’s head. Hatred filled her eyes like I had never seen before. As we bumped along the dirt road, I wondered where we were going. The hope that things could get better had long ago left me.

The hours went by and we found ourselves pulling up in front of Father and Stepmother’s shanty north of Anderson. I could hardly believe my eyes. Even Pearl seemed a little excited. Her eyes were big and her mouth parted, but her grip on me tightened.

“Git out,” Master Billings ordered. We climbed out of the buggy over the wheel caked with dried mud and ran toward the house. Father came to the door and looked with stunned surprise at his two children returning home. He grabbed us by the arms and took us back to the buggy. Before he could ask why we were being returned, Master Billings shouted, “Keep em, hear?”

It was then we learned that Miss Billie had threatened to commit suicide unless he returned us to our home. Master Billings, although furious about it, returned us to our father.

Hungry and exhausted, our bodies aching from the long, bumpy ride on the floor of the buggy, we entered the familiar cabin. Rosie actually seemed glad to see us. She held out her arms to us and hugged us. When we told her how Margie had been sold and taken off to Georgia she cried real tears. We ate ravenously of corn bread, molasses, greens, and salt pork. Then Rosie put us to bed on the straw pallet on the floor.

I heard her say in a trembling voice to Father, “They look half dead, Jim, half dead shor ’nuff.”

4

Our happiness at being free and home again didn’t last. Rosie did not let us rest for a minute. She was glad to have Pearl back so she had someone to do her work for her, and Pearl set to work immediately cleaning, cooking, washing, and tending the garden. I was so happy to be home that I did my chores eagerly and without complaining. Father seldom spoke to us. Then, not even a week after we had been home, Rosie started telling him lies about us again.

“They’s stealin food!”

“They be underfoot!”

“Them chillrens is lazy, no-good, that’s the God hepp me truth!”

“They’s just plain devilment!”

Pearl and I were hurt and angry that Rosie would lie about us that way, especially when we worked so hard for her.

Mealtime was once again cornmeal mush, which we ate with our fingers while Rosie and her boys ate at the table. Pearl and I would take our bowls and sit on the steps outside and eat. Pearl would talk about Mama, Ella, and Margie, so’s I wouldn’t forget. She comforted me, telling me we would see Margie again, and we would talk about our other brothers and sisters who were now gone and far away. Then she would talk about heaven, where Mama and Ella were right now dancing with Jesus. Tears would roll down my face as Pearl would tell me stories about how Mama was singing to Ella and how happy they were with Jesus.

“They is no slaves in heaven, chile,” she would explain, “and they is always plenty to eat.”

When she saw my questioning face, she answered as though she knew what I wanted to ask.

“Oh, Robert, it be in the Bible, that’s what I heard!”

The Bible. The Bible. I remembered Mama telling me in the field that day long ago that I must learn how to read so I could read to her from the Bible. Pearl couldn’t read or write, and I had never even seen a book. I had no idea what the Bible was, but I nodded to Pearl so she wouldn’t worry about me being ignorant.

Father stayed away most of the nights and when he came home, he was always drunk and he fought with Rosie.

We were home about two weeks when Father called me to run an errand.

“Take this here sack and buy some cornmeal from Zeke, boy.”

Zeke Miller’s cabin was about a mile away across the creek and over the field.

I took the small cloth bag and headed through the garden down a footpath in the direction of the creek. Pearl was gathering sticks in the wooded area behind our shanty. When I went past her, she jumped at me playfully, whirling me around to tickle me. We tumbled together, laughing and getting dirty in the red dust of the earth. Lying together under the blue sky all out of breath, I looked at her face and kissed her dusty cheek and said my first words in almost six months. “Pearl, yoll shure be pretty.”

Pearl sat upright in the dirt.

“You talked! You talked! Jesus, mah Robert done talked!” A joy filled her face that I had not seen since before Mama died.

I was so happy as I ran down to the creek’s edge, I felt like flying. I could talk! I didn’t dare try it again for fear of sounding like mush, but I couldn’t forget the look on Pearl’s face. I had made her happy, genuinely happy, and I believed in my heart that everything was going to be all right after all.

The creek was lonely and still. The water moved lazily along in the heat of the midmorning, the sun dancing off its surface making patterns and shiny shapes. After a few minutes of wading, I climbed the far bank and headed through the field toward Zeke’s shanty. When I arrived I knocked on the wooden door frame. Zeke’s wife called, “Yoll come in!” I entered the room and held out the little sack and grunted. I was afraid to try to talk, afraid it wouldn’t work.

“What you want, boy?” Mrs. Zeke asked pleasantly.

I took a breath and said, “Uh—uh—uh c-c-c-orn meal, Ma’am.” She smiled at me and I was delighted with myself. I had spoken again! I had formed good words! The sensation that my mouth was filled with sand was still there, but I had spoken, I had really spoken! I grinned broadly.

I danced all the way through the field to the creek.

“C-c-c-orn meal, Ma’am! Corn m-meal, Ma’am!” I sang.

I stopped and looked for frogs along the creek banks, but I could find none. Finally, in the early afternoon I arrived back at our shanty. Only Rosie was at home. I looked around for Pearl. I searched the cabin, the yard, and then I saw that the buggy and the mule were gone. Fear crowded my head. I ran screaming inside to Rosie. My mouth wouldn’t form any recognizable sounds. “Peh! Peh! Ahhhhh! Ahhhhhh!” Rosie didn’t even look at me. Her face was cold and smug.

Panicked, I ran as fast as I could up to the main road and looked in both directions. No sign of the wagon. “Pehhhhhh!!”

Father did not return that night and neither did Pearl. I slept beside the door shivering and crying all night. When I awoke in the early grey morning it was raining. I heard the sound of the mule sloshing in the mud and I ran outside. The smell of whiskey was strong, and Father was alone in the wagon. “Peh! Peh!” I wailed.

Father ignored me and slid down from the wagon into the mud. He walked right past me. I grabbed his trouser leg, wailing unintelligible sounds. He shook me off with a drunken snort and went inside the cabin. I didn’t dare go inside. My thin shirt was soon soaked through to my skin, and I shook with cold. I knew that Father had sold Pearl again, and the life and hope drained out of me like the rain as it dripped down my face and fell to the wet mud at my feet.

My loneliness in the next days was as strong as my hunger. I was so hungry most of the time that I ate grass and once even tried eating dirt. Mostly, I lived on the peanuts my father was growing. He didn’t know that I was eating them, half-grown, still green and all.

One day in early October Father called me.

“Git into the wagon, boy!”

My heart began to beat faster, but I knew it would be useless to ask him where we were going. The road was dry and dusty and we bumped along, not speaking. This time I rode on the seat next to him in the front of the wagon. I felt a slight tinge of excitement, but fear had become so much a part of me that I sat trembling on the edge of the seat.

We entered Anderson and turned west on the main road. After about a half hour we came to a crossroad and turned south. The farms were large and I looked in wonder at the immense cotton fields. There were many Negroes working in the fields and around the big barns. I tried not to think about where we might be headed and why.

Soon another farm came into view on the west side of the road. It made the Billings Plantation look small by comparison. We pulled into the curved driveway, and I was awed by the grandeur of the house. The sloping yard was well-kept and groomed. Flowers grew in artistic groupings and tall cottonwood trees lined the driveway. This was the Sam Beal Plantation, my prison and my home for the next eight years.

Father whoa’ed the mule and sat silent, waiting. In a few minutes I heard a door slam and footsteps come running around the side of the house. Pearl! She stood barefoot, wearing the same dress she had on when I had last seen her. She wore a muslin apron over it. She was very angry.

“You wicked man! You bringing this chile to this evil place? You is jes plain evil and wicked!”

Father ignored her. He jerked his head, indicating for me to get out of the wagon. I did so quietly and stood beside it. But Pearl continued.

“How can you sell my mama’s baby like this! He a dumb chile!”

Father curled his lip. “Hush you mouth, Sister.”

At that moment a short, stocky man with a pocked, swarthy face came toward us. He wore overalls and a dirty flannel shirt and thick, heavy boots. Father talked to him in a low voice. The man looked at me and then continued talking with Father. The white man gave him some money. Then my father drove the buggy out of the driveway without a glance back to his children. Useless as I was, I’d been sold once again.

5

I was so happy to see Pearl that I didn’t care about anything else. Mr. Beal hurled some orders at Pearl to take me to the slave quarter, and with a “Yessuh, Massuh Beal, suh,” she took my hand and began running around a wooden walk alongside the house, past a kitchen door, then across the yard past a smokehouse, chicken coop, and barn, and down a dirt path to two rows of shacks like there was at the Billings Plantation.

“Peh—Peh,” I pleaded. I had so many questions to ask her. Where were we? Would we stay together now? Was it really a wicked place? Would Father come back for us?

Pearl knew exactly what was in my confused mind. She sat me down in some dirt next to one of the shacks. “This be the Sam Beal Plantation,” she told me. “Father done sold us again. This be home now.”

I nodded.

“We be together so you don’t be down in the mouth.” Again I nodded.

“It be evil here, but you do what be told you, an yoll be jes fine. Come on, let me love you now. You got any love for me, chile?”

With that I leaped into her lap hugging and wrestling, and we tumbled in the dirt together laughing just like always. Being sold as a slave boy didn’t bother me because Pearl and I were together again. I forgot Rosie and Father’s cruelty. I forgot Father’s drunkenness. I forgot the loneliness and the despair—Pearl was here.

Later, Pearl stood me up and looked at me; then under her breath she said, “Pappy never done shoulda carried yoll here. Yoll jes a dumb lil old baby chile.”

Pearl was staying in one of the shanties with a married couple named Buck and Corrie Moore. They were both field hands and they worked from sunup to sundown every day. Buck and Corrie had shown Pearl kindness in sharing their cabin and food with her, and now I was added to the family. They took to me right away and I felt at home with them. We had corn bread, molasses, greens, and corn tea for supper that night, and I ate like I hadn’t ate in an age.

Corrie said quietly, “He plumb starvationed.”

Pearl explained to me what life at the Big House was like. She told me that Mr. Beal was a hard and tough boss man and that we should stay away from him, especially when he was drinking. He was particularly evil then.

Mrs. Beal, Pearl told me, was a kind enough lady, as far as white ladies come, but she didn’t trust her nohow.

There were six children in the Beal family: John was eight years old and very mean; Thomas, six years old, just sort of mean; Juanita was five years old; Virginia, four; Ethel, three; and lastly, baby Anna, who was a year and a half.

There were about five house slaves. There was Big Mac, who was the house man and hired hands’ cook; then there was Mary Webb, who was the family cook. Harriet was the housekeeper and she had two helpers, a girl named Daisy and my sister Pearl, who also were to tend the children.

I was overjoyed when I was told that I would be working in the Big House, too. That meant I could be with Pearl all day.

Pearl and I slept together on the floor of Buck and Corrie’s shanty on a pile of rags, and there was no blanket to pull over us. We were better off than we had been at the Billings Plantation and at Rosie’s.

In the Big House it was Big Mac who gave me my duties. I liked him right off. He was a tall, lean man with very dark skin. He had a scar that ran from his forehead to his chin, just missing his eye and spreading out like a row of tulips on his cheek. He had a large, booming voice and hands the size of two big kettles.

“Every morning before daybreak, yoll git some sticks and light this here fire in the cookstoves,” he ordered. Then he took me from fireplace to fireplace in the bedrooms, showing me how to light them. “You takes the sticks and places them like so for kindling, you lights from the rear, and then you blows on it like this, and you waits. Then you adds the logs, like this here. See?”

“Yessuh.”

“And you keep the woodboxes filled.” He showed me the woodpile outside, and he said, “You be a big boy now, hear?”

“Yessuh Massah suh.”

“I don’t be yo massah, Robert. You call me Mac. Big Mac.”

“Yessuh Massuh Big Mac suh.”

I was amazed as we passed from room to room in the Big House. Even though the Beals were not rich white folk, I was dazzled by the rooms. I saw carpets for the first time in my life, stuffed chairs with antimacassars draped over their arms and backs; I saw carved hutches and rows of china dishes sitting inside them. I saw polished tables and ornate kerosene lamps. I saw curtains and bedspreads. There were pictures hanging on wallpapered walls, and in some of the rooms, wonder of wonders, I saw painted wood toys. I saw dolls with real hair and fancy clothes. I saw toy trucks with real wheels. I had never dreamed of playing with a toy because I had never seen a real one.

Big Mac caught me staring at a large stuffed bear. He laughed and said, “It ain’t real, boy.” I grunted, trying to ask him what it was for.

Big Mac said, “Dem’s de white chillren’s, and they’s soon as cut off yor black fingers ’n let you tech it.”

It was also my job to sweep the back porch, the wooden walk, and the yard. If I didn’t keep these clean, Big Mac warned, I would get whupped good until I learned how to do it right.

I wanted to say, “Yes sir, Mister Mac, sir,” but it came out like, “yassahmassamasuh.” It almost sounded like talking. Big Mac didn’t even seem to notice. In fact, Big Mac never once made mention of my speech problem in all the years I was on the Beal Plantation. And he never once referred to me as “dumb.” I think he must have been a very great man.

I had very little contact with the white folk, and although the white children were strangely interesting to me, I didn’t have to have anything to do with them. That is, not right away.

When I finished my chores at the Big House, I would run back to the slave quarter and play with the other children whose parents were out in the fields. I was delighted to have some friends to play with. I learned new games and new sports, ones that my little sister Ella and I never knew about. There was a game called baseball, and we played with a stick and a stone. I loved it, although I couldn’t hit the stone with the stick at all, nor could I run and catch the stone very well when somebody else hit it.

The enemy in all of our games was always the white man. The white man was both feared and hated in the quarter, and the children especially expressed their feelings in their games and sports. They had one game they played called “Kill Massah Thrasher,” where they beat rocks on a pile of dirt until it was flattened. I learned that Thrasher was the name of the chief overseer, the most hated and dreaded white man on the Beal Plantation. He was known to have whupped pickers until they fainted just because they stood up and stretched, breaking the bent-over posture of picking to talk to each other. Chatting wasn’t allowed except on breaks. What was allowed was singing.

Every night after supper I’d go to the Big House to be with Pearl, and I’d stay there until she was through work. Sometimes she would be working until ten at night, and she would have to be back at four in the morning. I just liked being near her so I waited in the big kitchen for her or on the steps outside, being careful to stay away from the white folk. Then we’d walk to our shanty together and maybe we’d sing or maybe not say anything. It didn’t matter. It would seem like we’d just get to sleep when Pearl would nudge me to wake up, and I’d run to the Big House to light the fires while it was dark out and everyone was still asleep.

The slaves’ children ate their noon meal from a large pot of boiled cornmeal that was brought down to the quarter by either Pearl or Daisy or one of the bigger slave boys. This was emptied into a large wooden trough and set on the ground. All of the children came running with pieces of shingle or cardboard or a tin can to scoop out what they could get. If you ate fast and got there first, you’d get the most. If you were like me, you got there last and never ate fast enough. Nobody was ever filled up though—no slave child ever had enough to eat.

I usually ate breakfasts at the Big House. After I started the fires, Big Mac would give me a hunk of corn bread and some hot coffee. I’d crouch down by the cookstove and gulp it down. I was up long before the sound of the horn was heard in the quarter waking the slaves. One morning before the overseers came to eat, Big Mac gave me an apple and said, “Beat it, now, hear?” I ran out of the kitchen and stood breathless in the dark by the side of the smokehouse. I had never before eaten a whole apple. I ate the whole thing—core, seeds, and all.

Mary Webb, the family cook, was a surly little woman with flashing black eyes and a thin, pointed nose that shot out from her face like a bullet. Her mother was a slave and her father was a white man. She was one of the many transferred slaves that came from another plantation. Often a slave’s family was torn up like Mary’s, leaving husband and children behind, and they would never know where their family was taken off to.

Mary Webb was filled with nastiness—demonized, I think she was. She had a high-pitched, railing voice you could hear for two miles. “Git that skillet yonder!” she’d shriek at me, and if I didn’t jump with all my might to do as she said, she’d scream so loud my ears would ring. Or she’d throw something.

One day while I was helping Pearl finish scrubbing the large griddle, Miss Mary screamed at me to take out the garbage. I didn’t move fast enough to please her, and a terrible rage came over her. I froze as I saw her spring for a large carving knife. She lunged at me just as Big Mac hollered, “Move, boy!” I jumped, grabbed the can of garbage, and flew out of the door.

Another time when my response to Miss Mary’s command was not to her liking, she hit her target. She threw a heavy cast-iron biscuit pan at me and got me right on the forehead. I was knocked unconscious.

“Robert, honey,” I heard Pearl call. She was stroking my cheek and holding a tin cup of yellow flower tea.

“Robert, honey, you know what?”

“Uh?”

“Yoll be six years old now. You is a big boy!”

“Ahz?”

“You done become six June 27 las. Don’t you forgit that date now, hear? Some people jes don’t know zakly when they was born. But you do, hear? You is six years old June 27 las.”

I didn’t feel any different being six than I had felt when I thought I was five, except for the large bump on my head, but Pearl seemed to think it was important I be six.

Pearl was growing prettier all the time. She had high cheekbones like Mama, soft full lips, and small, even teeth. Her eyes were large and deep set, and she always looked as though she was studying in her thoughts. She was fourteen. Her good looks bothered Buck and Corrie. They said a black slave girl is better off ugly.

I had some bad headaches after the blow Mary Webb gave me. Big Mac would get irritated if I talked about it, so I learned early not to complain of physical pain. Servants just don’t complain about pain.

Sundays were my favorite day. The white folks usually went out on an outing after church, so Pearl could leave the Big House and we could go for walks around the plantation together, or go visiting some of the other families in the quarter.

One autumn Sunday about five in the evening, Miss Harriet, the Beals’ housekeeper, came down to the quarter looking for Pearl.

“Come on,” she called, “Massuh callin yoll.”

Pearl’s eyes widened in fright. “What he want wi’ me?”

“Mary Webb, she be drunk and can’t cook nothing nohow. He want you to come cook up a meal for him and his friends.”

Reluctantly, Pearl followed Miss Harriet up the path to the Big House. Buck’s face was solemn as he watched her go. I ran after her to go along, but Miss Harriet shooed me off.

Pearl did not come back that night. In the morning before sunup I ran up the cold dirt path to the Big House to light the fires as usual. I picked up a load of wood from the woodpile first and carried it to the house. There was a small light flickering in the kitchen window. I entered the room and saw Big Mac hovering over something on the floor. It was Pearl.

He saw me coming and put his hand up. “Go ’way, son. Ain’t nothin fuh yoll to see.”

“Peh! Peh!” I screamed. Big Mac couldn’t keep me from her, and being afraid I’d wake the entire house, he didn’t hold me back.

“The massuh an’ his friends . . .” Big Mac sobbed.

They had raped and burned her with the poking iron.

Something happened to me when I saw her lying there on the floor. A cold, icy, fingerlike vise grabbed my body, and with every ounce of strength I had, I hated the white man. Big Mac picked up the thin, broken form of my sister in his big arms and carried her outside, down the path, and to the quarter to Buck and Corrie’s. In his strong arms she looked no bigger than a child like myself.

Corrie fixed up some ointments to lay on Pearl’s body and face. Some places she put leaves, other places lard, other places some grease gotten from the wagon wheels. Pearl was conscious and moaning in a low, agonized voice I never heard before. Big Mac had to leave right away to cook breakfast for the overseers. Some women field workers came and prayed over Pearl; some cried, but most of them just looked at her with hard, cold faces. They knew what had happened, and there wasn’t a court in the world that cared.

It took several days, but finally Pearl began to get better. Soon she was off the bed and able to use her hands and feet. She didn’t go back to work in the Big House after that terrible night, though, and was sent to work in the fields. I was heartsick over it. She went to the fields before sunup and didn’t get back till sundown. The only time I could see her would be at the noon meal and at night. She was sullen and quiet now. There was a fury in her eyes that hadn’t been there before, and it seemed like to me it was anger that kept her going.

Field work was hard on Pearl. She wasn’t strong to begin with, and being outside in the cold, barefooted and wearing only a thin cotton dress, she developed a cough that wouldn’t stop. The wounds on her body were still healing, and it pained her each time she coughed.

Corrie gave her everything she could think of. She made special root teas, she made a syrup with molasses and some bitter leaves, she put hot poultices on her chest, but the cough wouldn’t leave.

Then, to my complete horror, early in the winter the Missus moved me out of Buck and Corrie’s shanty and into the Big House permanently. I was not allowed off the grounds, which meant I couldn’t go to the quarter. They put me in the same room with the white sons, John and Thomas, who were eight and six years old, and baby Anna, who was almost two. My new chore was to mind baby Anna.

I sat crying on the woodbox in the kitchen the first morning I was ordered to live up at the Big House. Big Mac saw me, and he came striding over to me and slapped me hard across the cheek.

“There’ll be no more of that, hear?” I was stunned. I knew nothing else to do but cry. I couldn’t fight back; I couldn’t even talk. I could only hate and cry.

It was almost noontime of the first day at the Big House when I got what you might call my official welcome. It came in the form of the dreaded overseer, Thrasher.

I had heard many terrible things about him, but I had never seen him. When the overseers came for their meals, I had made it my business to be out of sight. This day, however, I was caught off guard. Besides, the Big House was now my prison, and I was not allowed to go to the slave quarter anymore. I could go only as far as the woodpile, by orders of the master.

It was while I was coming from the woodpile with wood and sticks in my arms for the cookstoves in the kitchen that I met up with Thrasher. I was trying to hurry with my errand because I didn’t want another biscuit pan in the head from Mary Webb.

Around the corner of the yard came Thrasher riding on his powerful brown and white horse, and he straightened in the saddle when he saw me. I stopped, bowed slightly, and tried to say “Good day, suh.”

Thrasher’s voice boomed at me, “Niggerboy!”

I whirled in my tracks as he removed the long black whip he carried on the horn of his saddle. He raised his arm high in the air and the whip came cracking down on my neck and shoulders. The blow brought me to my knees with wood and sticks falling to the ground.

“You call me Mr. Thrasher, suh, hear?”

Mary Webb came to the kitchen door when she heard the sound of the whip. Thrasher turned his rage on her.

“You better learn this here niggerchile how to talk right or he goin to be a sorry niggerchile, hear?”

“Yessuh, Massah Thrasher, suh,” she said in a high, mocking voice.

When I tried to get up, I wobbled on my feet and fell backwards in the dirt. Mary Webb watched me go down, wiped her nose on the back of her hand, and went back into the kitchen to finish her work.

The pain burned like a hot fire on my neck and shoulder. I finally struggled to my feet and dragged myself to the kitchen door of the Big House. Mary Webb was standing at the cookstove. Her eyes flashed when she saw me. Then in a high, shrill voice, she called, “Roberrrrrt! Where’s that wood I tole you to git?”

6

It was the winter of 1917. I was six years old and so was Thomas Beal. We discovered one another the very day that Thrasher had given me the lash in the yard.

I stood by the doorway of the room I was to sleep in with the white children. The pain in my neck and shoulders was awful bad, and I was feeling nauseous; I wanted to lie down but I was afraid to in that room where the white children were.

Thomas saw me standing in the door and he said, “What’s yor name, boy?”

“Robert,” I answered. (It came out like “Wobber.”) I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to call him sir or not.

“My name is Thomas. Are you seven yet?”

I couldn’t answer that. I didn’t know if seven came before or after six.

“I’m gonna be seven and have a birthday,” Thomas told me proudly.

He showed me the bed he slept in and the bed his brother, John, slept in. Anna’s crib was right near the little cot that had been set up for me. In addition to the little cot, there was a tiny dresser for me. I had nothing to put in it, of course. I stared at the room. There was a real ceiling, and the walls had blue flowered wallpaper on them. The bare wood floor was polished, and there were little rugs here and there. Pale blue curtains hung on the long, low windows, and the sun was shining in the room, making it seem warm and cheerful.

“Yoll ought to clean yourself up,” Thomas told me. “Yoll got blood all over you. Ugh.”

Big Mac washed me outside in the yard by the side of the house. “You do your own cleanin up after this, boy,” he told me. He washed me by pouring icy cold water from a bucket over my body and scrubbing me with a bar of tar soap. He used dried leaves as a scrub brush, but he was very gentle around the cut of the lash on my neck and shoulder.

“Got you good, boy,” he said with a tone of disgust.

After the icy bath, which left me chattering, came the worst part. It was the putting on of the new flax shirt. The coarseness of the fabric was like a million tiny pins sticking into my skin.

“In a few days this here shirt’ll be smooth as a rose petal,” Big Mac assured me.

I stumbled inside after him, feeling feverish and cold. He fixed me a cup of sassafras tea and told me to drink it down. He even tied a clean rag around my wounds.

In spite of the pain I felt from the lash wound and the pricks of the shirt, I lay down that night in my new bed with a feeling of excitement. It was the first time I had ever slept in a real bed, and I was sleeping in it all alone. I had a blanket that was clean all for myself, too. I did not stir until the next morning when Big Mac tugged at my foot.

“Fires need lightin, boy,” he said in his soft voice.

I stared dumbly around me in the darkness. For a moment I had forgotten where I was. The pain in my neck and shoulder reminded me, and my body felt raw and sore from the scratching of the new shirt. I struggled out of bed into the cold air and hurried to the woodpile for sticks and wood to start the fires.

By 4:00 a.m. I had all of the fires lit, including the ones in the cookstoves. I was still in the kitchen when the dreaded crew of overseers filed into their special dining hall for breakfast. There were eleven of them, including Thrasher. They were mean men with dirty mouths. They looked like giants, and it seemed to me they hated everything, even each other. They all lived on the Beal Plantation in dwellings within a few minutes of the Big House. Some had families and some didn’t. Most of them were heavy drinkers just like Mr. Beal, who was surely an alcoholic.

Thrasher caught sight of me and hollered across the room, “Niggerchile, you got some manners yit?”

I stood to my feet, “YessuhMassuhThrashuhsuh,” I mumbled.

Thrasher snorted. “What’s your name, chile?”

“Wobber, suh, MassahThrashuhsuh.”

Thrasher laughed and the others laughed with him. “He’s a dumb niggerchile too, ain’t he? You want another lash, chile?”

“NosuhMassuhThrashuhsuh.”

Big Mac passed by with a bowl of hot biscuits and Thrasher’s attention was then drawn to the food. I hurried for the broom and the scrub brushes to begin my chores. First the porch, then the steps, and then the yard. . . .

7

“We got a new black puppy. Want to see him?” John Beal walked through the front hallway with a stringy-haired friend his age.

“Nah. I knows what a nigger looks like. Ain’t no different from any othern. They all looks the same.”

Big Mac told me that the white folks liked to have “little black puppies” around. Some folks had two or three of them like me sleeping in their bedrooms with them. It was our job to run around after the white masters, cleaning up their chamber pots and doing other dirty work they didn’t want to do.

One day as I was finishing my work, Miss Harriet was taking the sheets off the children’s beds to put into the laundry pile. She was a large, stern-faced woman, and this day her mouth was drawn tight and her eyes had a distant look.

“I done raised these chillren,” she said aloud. Although I was the only one in the room, I had the feeling she wasn’t talking to me.

“I done nursed them all at my breast. Each one o’ them. I done washed their bodies and tuk care of ’em when they was sick. I done fed ’em they meals and I done put ’em in the bed at night. . . .” Her voice trailed off and I saw a tear streaming down her face.

Later that morning Big Mac told me her own little two-year old boy had died the night before in the quarter.

The slave women bore children by their own men as well as by the white bosses, who used them whenever they wanted to. These women worked either in the field from 4:30 in the morning till after dark or, like Harriet, worked at the Big House all day and night. When they finally went home to their shanties and their own children for the few hours before they’d have to return to work, they’d be too exhausted to care for and feed their own families rightly. So the job was left up to the children themselves. The older children had the responsibility of taking care of the babies and little ones. Sometimes an old slave granny was put to work minding the children in the quarter when she got too old to go to the field.

I learned that Harriet had seven children of her own, and while the master’s babies were sucking at her breast, her own children were going hungry down in the slave quarter.

Harriet had a husband once but he had been sold to a plantation owner in Alabama. “After he gone,” Big Mac said, “Harriet never smile no more.”

These were things my child’s mind could not understand, but even if I couldn’t understand, I felt bad about Harriet’s baby dying because I remembered how bad I felt when Mama and my little sister, Ella, died. Dying was not good. It meant they weren’t anymore. Just like my mama. She was there all the time, and then one day she wasn’t there. She was no more. It makes you sad and it makes you lonesome.

Saturday night was supposed to be payday for the field hands. Since the Big House was now my prison, I could see what went on from there. The men would line up at the smokehouse, or the plantation store, and the boss there would give them their provisions—usually flour, sugar, some salt pork, beans, cornmeal, and some tobacco. Then they’d tell them how much they owed, and it was always more than what the pay was. So there was no exchange of money. Sometimes when they’d come for their pay the boss would say, “Master Beal is out of town. Won’t be back till Monday. He’ll pay yoll then.” Of course Master Beal would forget to pay them on Monday, and every day for that matter. It was very rare when he would throw a dollar or two their way.

With winter coming, shoes were needed and so was warmer clothing. Not everybody got shoes, and not everybody got another layer of clothing. Many field hands took sick and died in the winter months, and many were crippled up by the cold. I hoped I would get some shoes or maybe some trousers. I began to ask Harriet about it. She was indifferent, and I realized it was futile to continue to ask.

I missed Pearl. I longed to see her, and soon I became desperate to see her. Knowing that my punishment would be a whupping if I were caught, I began planning to sneak down to the quarter. I got my first chance one evening when the children were in bed sleeping. Master Beal was away, and Miss Harriet was upstairs with Mistress Beal. The house was still. I crawled out of bed, and barely breathing, moved through the kitchen, the porch, and then out the door and down the steps. I was careful to keep in the shadows of the yard. When I passed the woodpile and the stable, I came to the dirt path to the quarter and broke into a run.

When I reached Buck and Corrie’s shanty, they were surprised and then excited to see me. Pearl held me in her arms and squeezed me so tight she took the breath out of me. We laughed and cried and hugged, and everybody talked at once.

“They gonna whup you for this, chile,” Pearl warned. She was coughing bad and she looked worn out and so thin. The wounds on her body still weren’t completely healed. I asked her if they had given her any shoes, and she shook her head no. She wrapped her feet in rags to keep warm like many others. “Lissen here, chile,” she said. “We kin git beat and starved and worked to the bone, but we ain’t dead yit. Them white devils kin do what they done to me and I is still here. You lissnin to me, chile? We is tough, you got that? And don’t you be no weak crybaby. You be tough!”

The wind blew through the boards of the little shack, and we huddled before the fire in the hearth, and when it began to go out I put more sticks on it and then kissed Pearl goodnight. I promised myself the next time I came I would come bringing something for them all.

I knew there would be no way for Pearl to keep warm. There was the little pile of rags she slept on and a blanket Corrie had made, and that was all.

The moon was full and the sky covered with stars when I left the quarter. I ran up the hard, cold dirt of the path, rounded the yard, the stable, and the woodpile.

The Big House looked like a bulging, many-sided monster in the moonlight. The kitchen side jutted out like a long flat finger; the sun porch on the east side sat dark, cold, and square beneath the looming two-story arm behind it. Windows peered at me like enemy eyes.

My successful brief escape gave me new courage. My thought night and day now was when I could make another break for the quarter and what I could bring with me for my sister. I’d be tough, like Pearl said. Not a crybaby, no. Tough.

I began following Miss Harriet around as she cleaned the house. I would hold baby Anna and follow along behind Miss Harriet, learning where everything was. At first she didn’t like it, but then she allowed me to tag along with her. When I saw the huge linen closet on the second floor filled with towels, sheets, pillows, and blankets, I made plans to steal a blanket for Pearl. Miss Harriet must have seen the expression on my face as I gazed into the closet. She lifted my chin with her big hand and looked me in the eye.

“I know what you be thinking. We is cold and shiverin an’ they has got blankets enough to fill a room, Robert. But lissen up, chile, to what I’m sayin. Massah don’t have no mercy nohow on no thiefs. Don’t you start figurin a way to carry any o these fine blankets to the quarter, hear? Massah’ll cut off yor lil black fingers!”

That week I was being trusted to give baby Anna her lunch. There was fresh fruit, sandwiches, cookies, and other wonderful things that made me feel faint to look at. I fed her under the watchful eye of Mary Webb, and if I so much as licked a crumb from the tabletop, she would scream and call for Mistress Beal and tell her I was eating the baby’s food.

One afternoon I had peeled an orange for Anna, and I stuck one of the peels into my mouth. Mary Webb saw me from across the kitchen and let out a high, shrill scream. She rushed over to the table where I sat with the baby, grabbed me by my ear, and marched me into the sitting room where Mistress was sewing.

“This nigger done et Miz Anna’s orange, Missis, I see’d him!”

Mistress put her sewing down, and with a stony glare at me, said in a low voice, “I’ll speak to my husband about it. Now get out both of you.” I tried to protest but it was no use. Mary Webb hit me hard with the palm of her hand, and then yanking my ear, she pulled me back to the kitchen. I cried, knowing I would get the lash when the master came home.

Master Beal came home in time for dinner. After he had eaten, he came looking for me. “Robert,” he called, “come ere!”

He took me by the hand and in his other hand he held the dreaded leather strap. He led me out of the side door and took me around to the side of the house where Mac had given me my bath. Then he said, “Take off your shirt and lie down.” The grass was wet and cold, and the sky was already dark in the early evening. I could hear a cricket chirping happily near my cheek as the lash of the leather bit into my back.

When it was all over, Master Beal said, “You steal from me agin, boy, and I’ll show your black hide what a whuppin’ really tastes like, hear?”

“. . . yesssuhmassah . . . suh.”

And I watched him walk away, my face pressed into the dirt and the indigo sky above filled with stars.

8

The days grew colder, and the activity around the plantation decreased for the winter months. Some of the overseers left until spring, and the field slaves were used to fell trees, dig river banks, build, mend barns, and do the many other jobs necessary to keep the plantation running. Although it was not a wealthy plantation and Sam Beal was not a rich man, there was enough work for the workers to be kept busy from sunup to sundown.

Baby Anna was put in Miss Harriet’s charge again since my experience with the orange peel. As I did my chores around the Big House, I made plans to pay a visit to the quarter to see Pearl again.

I got my chance the day I received my first pair of trousers and shoes. John had worn and outgrown them, and Harriet said Mistress Beal wanted me to have them because she couldn’t stand looking at me so shabby and barefoot all the time. The shoes were too small and the trousers too big, but I felt like the richest boy in the world.

Then Mistress gave me a shirt to wear, too—a cotton one that buttoned like the ones white children wore. It was smooth on my skin, and I stroked it continually. I had never worn anything but coarse flax shirts, and this soft piece of clothing was a wonder to me.

That night after the evening meal, I waited until the kitchen was cleared out, and then I sneaked into the pantry and took a jar of strawberry preserves and another jar of peach slices. Then I fled from the house as though the devil himself were chasing me. I reached Buck and Corrie’s shack panting and gasping for breath.

“Chile!” Corrie exclaimed. “Is they after you?”

We opened the peaches right then and passed them around, eating them with our fingers. Pearl’s hands were scarred from her bitter experience with Master Beal.

There was a fourth person in the shanty that night, one I had never met. His name was George Murphy, and he was new on the plantation. Master Beal had hired him to do some special carpentry.

He was a handsome young man as black as the night. “Ain’t no white blood in me,” he boasted. I liked him right off because of his easygoing manner, his self-assurance, and his lack of fear of the white man. Pearl was completely taken by him. I had never seen her so radiant.

I sat with Pearl’s arms around me on the floor near the fire listening to George tell us stories about his dangerous, exciting escapades. He had done all sorts of jobs, from working on the railroad to building barns. He peppered his stories with traveling news. He is the first person I can ever remember telling us that slavery was against the law. “It ain’t legal for a man to own another man,” he insisted. “They’s a law!”

George could read a little and tell numbers. That way, he said proudly, nobody could cheat George Murphy of what was rightfully his.

The moments passed swiftly, and then I gave Pearl a kiss and said good-bye. I promised I would be back soon. George Murphy put his hand out and shook mine. I felt very important and manly, especially since I was wearing such fine clothes.

The clothes didn’t go unnoticed, by the way. But the reaction wasn’t quite what I had expected. Pearl looked at me oddly, and Buck and Corrie stared with no expression at all. “You look fine, boy,” Buck said finally in a dry voice. That’s all that was said about it.

I got back to the Big House safely again that night and tiptoed to my bed. I slept in my new clothes and shoes, not knowing enough to take them off.

The stolen items went unnoticed, and I was thankful and encouraged by it. Next time maybe I could bring more. Pearl was still coughing bad. I would remember to ask Big Mac about coughing and what would cure it.

A few evenings later while the white folks were having their supper in the dining room and Big Mac and I were eating grits and gravy in the kitchen, we heard a tremendous ruckus in the yard. Big Mac went to the window to see what it was.

“Wal, Thrasher got hisself another one,” he said. Mac opened the back door. Thrasher had a black man hooked under his arm. He had been slapped around plenty.

“Fetch the boss man!” he commanded.

Minutes later, Master strode out of the dining room, angry at being interrupted during his meal.

“This here nigger lef his job before quittin time, Boss,” I heard Thrasher shout. “He’s a uppity one, that’s for certain. Thinks he can do jes as he pleases.”

“I was done with my work!” I heard a voice insist. I recognized the voice. Quickly, I went to the window and cupped my hand to see outside. A wave of horror filled me. It was George Murphy.

Master Beal shouted back, “We’ll see how uppity he can be! We’ll jes bring him down to meet some of my friends and have a little talkin over. Hold him till I get ready.”

I saw Thrasher drag George Murphy to the horse barn. Master Beal stormed out of the back door. He had been drinking. They threw the tied-up figure on a horse and galloped out of the driveway.

“What’ll they do to him, Mac?” I asked, terrified.

“They’s gonna tear him apart,” Mac answered. “And if they don’t kill him, he’ll wish they had.”

“Oh no!”

“That’s the way they do, son; them Ku Klux, that’s the way they do.”

I couldn’t sleep that night thinking about George Murphy and what they were doing to him. When at last I heard horses and voices in the yard, I ran to the window. It was hard to see, but I made out the drunk swagger of Master Beal crossing the yard. He used the side entrance and went right upstairs. When it became quiet, I crept down to the kitchen, across the cold porch, down the steps, around the yard, and instead of using the path, I ran through the brush to the quarter. When I arrived, I heard voices coming from Buck and Corrie’s shanty. Someone was crying. Several of the slaves were up and around the door. I pushed through them. What I saw on the floor was worse than anything I had expected.

He had been beaten so badly there was hardly any skin on him. His handsome face was torn up and his body was twisted up funny.

Pearl was crying and putting some grease on his head and back. He was barely conscious.

Corrie was on her knees at his feet with a pail with water in it. Some other people were praying.

“I’ll be on the job tomorrow,” I heard George swear through cut and swollen lips.

“Never you mind,” Pearl whispered.

I don’t think anybody saw me come or leave the shanty that night, but I will never forget what I saw.

George Murphy became the talk of the quarter in the days that followed. News came to us through the house slaves who lived in the quarter, like Mary Webb, Daisy, and Harriet. The next day after his beating, he actually did get up on his feet and put in a day’s work. He became a symbol to us all of the strength of the black man.

After several weeks, he became well enough to run away. He made it, too, in spite of the hounds and searches, and nobody ever heard from him again. He remained our hero. Wherever he was, we knew he wasn’t owned by any man.

The white children taught me games, and we played almost as any normal children played—normal, that is, except I was not allowed to win or be first in anything, and if they wanted to fight, I was not allowed to hit back. If I had something in my hand, they could grab it if they wanted to, and I was not to protest.

Yet the children were kind to me. At mealtimes they often sneaked food from the table to give to me. They would sneak sandwiches and cake and sometimes a slice of ham or other meat. I gobbled the food hungrily, and they would laugh with delight to see me go at it.

One cold afternoon we were playing in the music room when Mistress Beal came in. “Mama,” Juanita asked suddenly, “how come Robert’s skin is dark and ours is white?”

Mistress answered coolly, “Because Robert and his people were created to be the white man’s slave. They are dark because they sinned against God and God punished them and made them servants to the white man.”

I listened in alarm.

“They sinned, and that’s why they’re meant to serve the white man. It’s in the Bible.”

The Bible! The book Mama told me about.

“Are there any niggers in heaven, Mama?”

“If there are, dear, they’re serving the white folk.”

I lowered my head in shame. Juanita seemed embarrassed too. She was learning that Negroes were not considered real persons.

“Robert don’t have a soul, honey,” Mistress said without blinking an eye. “Negroes don’t have souls. They are just like animals that way.”

“Don’t Harriet have no soul neither?” asked Juanita.

“No, dear. Harriet’s a Negro, and Negroes don’t have souls.”

Juanita looked as though she would cry. Mistress laughed softly. “Now, honey,” she cooed, “instead of putting on a sad face, you ought to thank the good Lord for giving you some niggers to take care of you.”

“. . . Yes, Mama.”

We left the music room, and Juanita went upstairs to her room without a word. I went outside to the woodpile. Pearl must have told me wrong. Mama and Ella weren’t free and dancing with Jesus in heaven, after all. They were black slaves serving the white angels. Whatever our sin was to deserve such an awful fate, it must have been real bad.

9

The winter days were long and I was worried about Pearl. On a grey, windy afternoon when there was a lot of activity around the Big House, I planned another escape to the quarter. Visitors were expected at the Big House that evening, and I was put to work cleaning the halls and the bathrooms. All day long tension filled the air. Mistress Beal was shouting orders, the house slaves were running around trying to obey them, the children were underfoot and misbehaving, and Mary Webb was throwing things in the kitchen. In my effort to avoid everybody, I got in everybody’s way. Not only did I receive the heel of Mistress Beal’s foot, but of Mary Webb’s and Harriet’s as well.

“Robert, get outa here!”

“Roberrrt! You brought in wet logs for the fire! Git out there an bring in dry logs!”

“Robert, git over here!”

“Robert, fetch some water!”

“Roberrrt, scrub these pots!”

“Robert, you ain’t nothin’ but somethin’ dumb!”

I was made to scrub the wooden planks of the front porch and steps and the wooden walkway leading to the circular drive. My hands in the icy water were numb, but I hardly noticed it because I was so excited about seeing Pearl again. I planned to make my getaway to the quarter when everyone was asleep that night.

Every once in a while I thought about Margie, and I wondered if they were treating her bad where they had taken her off to. I wondered if she was a house servant like me or in the field like Pearl. I didn’t let myself think about never seeing her again.

When the chores were done, the house servants were allowed to eat supper in the kitchen—fatback fried crisp, corn bread, and molasses. I asked Big Mac some questions that he seemed to understand the meaning of.

“Big Mac, where Hartwell, Georgie?”

“A long ways off, boy.”

“How long?”

“Too long for you to think about. If it was jes yonder down the road, it would be too far for you to think about.”

I looked at him, trying not to cry. “They done took my sister, Margie, off to Hartwell, Georgie.”

Big Mac finished his food and said somberly, “Let me tell you about a woman who used to live on this here plantation, boy.”

I listened closely.

“She quite a woman. Her name Lois. A good worker. She work the fields like a man. And she bring three little babies into this world, too. When she done bore her third baby, the boss, he call her and he say, ‘You leavin’ this place tonight. You done been sold to a new boss.’ It done tore out her heart and she scream and cry and beg the boss. ‘Don’t send me from my chillren! Please don’t send me from my chillren!’ But the boss, he don’t pay her no mind nohow and he pack her up in the wagon. When she scream and grab his leg beggin him to let her stay with her chillren, he give her a kick, and she fall in the ground crying and prayin to almighty God to help her and help her chillren.

“They puts her in the back of the wagon and off they goes down the road. They tuk her more’n a hundred miles away, way across the state to a great big farm where they put her to workin the field cuttin cotton stalk. She done ran away one night she was so grievin for those chillren. She jess had to get to her chillren. She done run night and day through the woods, the marshes, across the rivers, in wilderness and towns; that woman done run to git back here to her chillren and her man. She knew that no man slave can take care of the chillren.

“They didn’t catch her nohow. She got as far as the road up here jes a mile away. She was half-dead from running and being hongry. She got up here jes about a mile—” His voice broke.

Mac’s strong, wide shoulders crumpled and shook, and staring at the floor, he took a big gulp before continuing.

“Oh Lord,” he cried, “she got all the way to the plantation! Jessa few minutes from her babies who was cryin for they mammy—”

I sat still, my heart beating loud.

“They done catched her and throwed her in the jail until the new owner come and fetched her. She never saw her chillren or her man agin.”

Tears burned the edges of my eyes. The agony of being torn from those you love was common to us. Big Mac pulled his shoulders back and said quietly, “Boy, that woman was my wife.”

The visitors arrived and I helped carry their traveling cases to the guest rooms. Three young children eyed me with indifference as they moved around the rooms. There was food prepared for them, and the two families sat down to eat in the dining room. From the kitchen we could hear their laughter and loud talking. Master was not yet home, but we expected him soon.

At last the white folks went upstairs to their rooms. When the children were in bed, I set to work cleaning up after them and helping in the kitchen.

Mary Webb, Harriet, and Daisy were cleaning and preparing for the next day’s meals, and when nobody was looking, I sneaked out the door of the sun porch and ran through the yard, careful to dodge any light spots. As I made my flight, I had forgotten that Master Beal had not returned home yet.

I got as far as the woodpile when I heard heavy footsteps in the dark. I froze in my tracks and listened. Soon the hulking form of Master Beal approached. It was too late to duck. He had already seen me.

“Whozzat?” he demanded.

“W—W—Wobber, Massuh Beal, suh,” I answered in a voice barely audible. He was drunk and could hardly balance himself. “Whatchou doin outchere, boy?”

I quickly answered, “Fetchin wood, Massuh Beal, suh, I be fetchin wood.”

He growled and staggered toward the house. “Git movin then,” he said over his shoulder.

With trembling hands, I filled my arms with pieces of wood and hurried back to the Big House. That was my last attempt to get to the quarter that winter. It was many weeks before I got another opportunity.

The next days brought merrymaking and fun for the Beal family and their visitors. They had activities planned for each day, and the house was filled with the sounds of their voices and the smells of liquor and tobacco.

It was at this time I got my introduction to a torturous form of entertainment which gave them much pleasure.

After breakfast one cold morning, I was bringing in water from the well on the porch to be put on the cookstove to heat. “Robert,” Daisy said from the door, “Massuh callin you.” I hurried as fast I could and practically ran to the parlor, where he was sitting with his friends. He had already been drinking. I could tell by the way he sat and the crooked look on his face.

The fire was going in the fireplace, and the room was cozy and warm. “Put some coal on the fire, boy,” ordered Master Beal. “Yessuh, Massuh Beal, suh,” I responded properly.

I bent to pick up the coals as I was told when suddenly I felt a searing pain in my back. I whirled around, shocked and yelping. Master Beal stood behind me with a red-hot poking iron from the fire. He was laughing and so were his friends. “Let’s see how high you can jump, boy,” he cawed, jabbing the poking iron at my belly. The burning pain caused me to fall backwards onto the floor. He continued, jabbing and taunting and laughing hilariously.

“Jump, boy!—Oh, that ain’t high enough! Let’s see you do a little jig!” He thrust the glowing end of the poking iron into my leg, and I rolled over and scrambled to my feet, crying and squealing in terror.

“I said a jig, boy. A jig!” Again the poking iron came at me and I hopped out of its way. Again and again he pushed the fiery end of the poking iron at me. I leaped and hopped and turned and twisted each time to escape its sizzling my flesh. Sometimes I made it, but sometimes I didn’t. When the iron bit into me, I screamed and yelled, much to the master’s delight. Their laughter and excitement over this sport built to a frenzy as I wept and begged, “No Massuh, no, please Massuh—” jumping around the room to miss the deadly sear of the iron.

“Careful there, boy, don’t let the poker getcha!” he teased. I jumped. I hopped. I did the dance they wanted.

At last, when they tired of their fun, Master Beal shouted, “Stand still, boy.” I did, shaking and crying miserably. Then with one final teasing jab, he said in a calm voice, “You forgot to put any coal on the fire.”

Those burns took many weeks to heal, and I’d bear the scars on my legs my whole life. Master Beal loved to show off on his slave boy and for eight winters when guests came I was often called to “put the coals on.”

There was no such thing as doctor care for the slaves on the plantation. The animals had better medical treatment. Slaves died during the winters from exposure. Disease was common among the shacks in the quarter. Death was a victory.

One miserable day after another passed by, and I didn’t know any better but to believe I was what they said I was—a dumb niggerboy with no soul. I was the little puppy dog who did the dirty work for the white folks in their house, and dirty work was all my people were meant for. And the white folks expected us to be grateful for the honor of serving them. They felt it was hard work to take care of us, feed us, and give us shelter. They had some kind of idea that we should be happy for what they did for us, as people without souls paying for some terrible sins of the past. We were supposed to be singing and dancing and being just plain dumb and happy-like. I didn’t feel that way, but I acted that way. I had to.

10

The spring of 1918 came, and the plantation buzzed once more with activity. The overseers returned to their jobs, the slaves were put to the fields, and the cultivating was begun. Everybody was nervous and tense, and tempers flared continually.

Then came the rains. It rained night and day. It was cold, too, and the mud was deep in the yard. I made my runs to the woodpile to catch a glimpse of Pearl when the field hands filed by on their way to the field each morning.

I’d see her bent, downcast, moving toward the field. I’d jump with joy. She’d lift up her head and smile at me for a flashing moment. My heart would sing at the sweet sight of her. Then I’d watch her disappear over the hill and down to the muds of the field.

Each day I’d run to the woodpile at the same time, and each day I’d see Pearl moving behind Buck and Corrie toward the field. Some days the rain would be falling so hard that I could barely see her face, but I knew it was Pearl and that’s all that mattered.

One morning when the rains had passed, I stood at the woodpile waiting to catch sight of Pearl, but when the workers filed by, I didn’t see her. I didn’t see Corrie either.

I knew it was a very serious matter for a slave not to show up for work. They could get whupped bad for that.

I dropped the sticks in my hands. “Buck!” I called, “Where’s Pearl?” Buck looked down and said in a low voice, “She be ailin, son.” He moved away before I could ask more.

I hurried to light the fires and fill the woodboxes, and then I told Big Mac, “I’m goin to Pearl!” not caring whether I got whupped or not. I ran out of the house as fast as I could to the quarter.

I arrived at Buck and Corrie’s shanty out of breath and scared to go inside. I rushed through the door to find Pearl lying on Buck and Corrie’s cot making awful rasping sounds. I remembered those terrible sounds when Mama lay dying. I remembered those sounds.

Corrie saw me and tried to turn me away. “No, son. Sister’s ailin. You ought’n see her jes now.”

I screamed and threw myself at the bed. I could form no words with my mouth. It was as though I had never spoken. She was little more than a skeleton as she lay there gurgling and glassy-eyed.

“The rains,” Corrie cried. “The rains done did her in. They sent her to the fields with her ailin. We begged for a doctor—we begged for a doctor—” She buried her face in the folds of her skirt and sobbed.

Pearl lay half-conscious in the darkness of the shanty. It was damp and cold in the room, and she was shivering. Her feet were wrapped in rags. She had still not gotten any shoes. I could see the scars on her body from the beating she had last autumn. There were shiny grey pits and holes on her arms and legs, like I had.

Her once beautiful face was now just a few bones with skin stretched across them. Only fourteen years old and she looked like an old lady. She wore a rag of a dress and was clinging to the thin blanket covering her. I could tell she was suffering terribly. For a brief moment, her eyes focused on mine. She struggled to speak.

“Every . . . thing . . . gonna be . . .” Her lips turned upward in the tiniest smile and she reached toward me with her small hand. “Yoll be . . . a big boy . . . now, chile—”

From somewhere in my mind I heard laughter and saw again her black eyes sparkle in the sunlight, and we were tumbling in the grass as she tickled my nose, then my chin and neck. Her smile fixed itself on my face, and it was once again summer somewhere—somewhere, my Pearl and I frolicking, laughing, and she telling me with her sweet kisses and squeezes there was hope, there was hope.

The hours of the morning passed by, and I stayed by Sister, never taking my eyes from her face. I gasped with each painful breath she took. And then they stopped.

Her eyes were wide with a look of peace when it happened. Her mouth sprung open in surprise. There she lay—everything pure, beautiful, and loving that I knew. Pearl’s tortured body lay still now. I kissed her face and held the lifeless hand to my cheek. The grass was gone, and the sun in my life had gone out.

11

Summer 1918 arrived without my knowing it. I didn’t feel the air turn warm, didn’t see the trees bloom, didn’t hear the sound of the birds playing around the windows. I didn’t see or feel a thing. Pearl was dead.

Somewhere in the dense fog of those days, however, a particular day stands out. It was a Sunday afternoon and the Beals must have been on an outing, because there was nobody around and it was very quiet. I was sitting on the wooden steps outside the kitchen door in the heat of the afternoon with nothing but the sound of flies buzzing around me. I looked up and saw a large-boned, barefooted Negro wearing tattered work clothes coming across the yard. It was a dangerous thing for a field slave to come up to the Big House like this. He came nearer, and then he was standing before me with his face close to mine.

“It’s me, chile,” he said softly, “Buck.”

I said nothing.

He smiled a kind smile. “How y’doin, chile?” I stared blankly. Then after an awkward pause, he said, “I had to come up here because I done promised Pearl I would. You hearin me? Yoll be seven years old now, chile. You was born June 27, 1911. Hear me, boy?”

I said nothing.

He spoke to me with tears in his eyes. I watched his mouth and his wet, creased face without interest. Then while he was still talking, I stood up, turned my back to him, and went into the house.

———

Summer passed and the autumn came. A new duty was given me by Master Beal. I was to hitch up the buggy for the white children to go to school every morning after I brought in the wood and lit the fires.

I did this vaguely and stupidly. It didn’t matter to me what they had me do or what they did to me. I went along with it all and felt nothing, thought nothing, and said nothing.

12

The grueling days of spring and summer passed. Autumn was gone, and winter was settling in on the plantation. I thought of Pearl continually. It seemed that everything reminded me of her. Winter reminded me that she had no shoes when she died.

I was still wearing the same shoes they had given me over a year ago, and my toes were bent and crushed in them. I wore them without socks, and I wore my only trousers and shirt night and day.

My new chore of hitching up the wagon for the children to go to school became the most interesting point of my life at this time. I decided I wanted to go to school, too.

One day I gained courage enough to ask Master Beal if I could go to school. “Please, Massuh, suh,” I said in my best speech, “can I go to school, suh, please?”

Master Beal rocked on his heels in laughter. “You? You? You nigger slave boy, go to school? What work would they have for you to do there?”

I was lucky I didn’t get the back of his hand or the heel of his boot for annoying him with what he said was “dumb nigger botheration” and “damn uppity.”

Every morning I helped the children climb into the buggy with their lunch baskets and their books. I wanted to go to school more than anything.

I would wait for them to come home in the late afternoon.

“Teach me about book learning,” I’d beg Thomas, whom I played with the most because we were the same age. He would tell me what he had learned each day. He was the teacher and I the pupil. I drank every word in hungrily.

Juanita and Virginia would play school with me, too, and once in a while John would even join in. He was ten years old now, and his meanness was growing with each new year.

It was not long before I could count to ten and write some numbers. Juanita taught me how to write my name, which I thought was the most wonderful thing to be able to do. I would write ROBERT a hundred times a day in my mind.

They were good days. I can truthfully say that we enjoyed each other as children. I had no rights, but I enjoyed their wanting to play with me. I didn’t care about their hurting me—they were playing with me right then, and I liked that.

The winter of 1918 enfolded us. Sometimes the temperature dropped below freezing and twice that winter we had snow. I would go out to the woodpile to bring in the wood with my feet squeezed into my shoes, without socks, hat, or covering for my hands.

It was during the coldest part of the winter that Daisy, the house girl who helped Harriet, died. She had given birth to her third baby, and a few days later she was back working in the Big House and doing the laundry outside. Harriet didn’t want her doing heavy work and told her to rest. I watched Daisy as she burned up with the fever, and finally she couldn’t stand up on her feet. Big Mac carried her to the granny who delivered her baby in the quarter and I followed behind. Harriet and the granny boiled rags to keep hot on Daisy’s stomach while I held a cold rag on her head. They fed her thyme tea and corn silk, but the infection took her over, and a week later she was dead. Her baby was given to another nursing mother in the quarter to care for.

“Our Daisy done gone to be with Jesus,” Harriet told me, wiping her face of sweat and tears. It was then I figured out that Jesus didn’t live in heaven, since heaven was only for Whites. Jesus was colored like us! I didn’t ask any questions. I had figured everything out on my own.

I overheard the overseers in their dining room talking about her the day after Daisy died. “She woulda been a good nuff breeder,” I heard a rough voice say. “It’s a damn shame.”

Daisy had been born on the Beal Plantation and didn’t know any other life. She would have served the Beals another fifty years without complaining because she didn’t know any better. She was illiterate, obedient, brainwashed, and handsome. That’s why she could be given the tribute of being a “good breeder.” She thought that was part of life, too.

The many hours I spent each day in the kitchen were in dreaded fear of Mary Webb. She always had a bottle of whiskey nearby. The Beals liked her cooking and liked the way she ran her kitchen. Mary was mean to the bone, but never, ever sassy to the Beals. Oh, she was sweet to them, all dumb and grinning. She’d like to kiss the wormy white toes of Missus, but when Missus come in and give her orders, I’ve seen Mary suck in and come up with a wad of spit big as a turnip and blow it at her soon as she turned her back. Mary Webb, she was mean. And she didn’t like me one bit. I still carried the scars on my head from the biscuit pan she had heaved at me. Daisy had gotten along with Mary Webb. She knew how to stay out of her way and do as she was told.

One night while taking swipes at the kitchen floor with the long, clumsy straw broom, I muttered, “Massuh an his chillren don’t hardly care nohow that Daisy be daid now. How come they ain’t cryin on accounta Daisy was they friend? She love them chillrens, ekspecially that baby Anna.”

Big Mac heard me and whirled me around by the arm. With a hard look in his eye and in a cold, stern voice, he said, “Boy, you stop that kinda talk. It’s a fool nigger who talks like that. You take care a yoself, and that’s that. If a white man care about a black man, it’s a peculiar thing! I ain’t havin no nigger chile livin with me who’s lookin to make a friend out of the white man!”

He had never raised his voice to me before. I was so surprised, I stood with my mouth open staring at him. “Yoll learn to care for yoself, chile! They ain’t no place in this here worl’ for a weepy nigger!” His face was tense with emotion. “Yoll learn yoself to care yoself! If’n you love somebody, chile, shor nuff they take em from you, jes like they done tuk yor sister Pearl and sister Margie. Yoll jes be a lil ole child, but you gots to think like a man.”

A hush fell over the kitchen. Even Mary Webb was silent. Harriet, who felt real bad about Daisy, suddenly picked up her head and began to sing. I stood still, staring at Big Mac, who remained glaring at me, waiting for me to acknowledge what he’d said.

“. . . Yessuh,” I said faintly.

Harriet’s voice was deep and rich as she sang,

They’s a comin wi de chariot,

Ah know, ah know,

They’s a comin wi de chariot

To carry mah poor bones home. . . .

She was singing her last respects to a girl she loved. Mac’s words had touched her, and she knew all too well “they ain’t no place in this here worl’ for a weepy nigger.”

Ah done work and ah done sweat;

These ole bones is goin a rest,

Ole chariot

Carry me home to Jesus.

They’s a comin wi de chariot,

Ah know, ah know,

They’s a comin wi de chariot

To carry mah poor bones home. . . .

When she had finished the song, it was finished in her heart as well. She would never speak of Daisy again. At least not to me.

———

One afternoon when I was playing school with Thomas and Juanita, Master Beal appeared in the doorway. His eyes flashed.

“What’s goin on here?” he demanded.

Thomas answered innocently, “We are playing school, Daddy. I’m the teacher.”

“You learnin this nigger to read and write?”

“Yessuh,” answered Thomas proudly.

Master Beal grabbed a chair and threw it at Thomas. It just missed him.

“Git!” he shouted at me. I scrambled to my feet and fled from the room. Huddled in a corner of the porch, I could hear him shouting at the children.

“If I evah catch any of you learnin a nigger to read and write agin, I’ll whup you so’s you won’t set down for a month!” I heard the smack of his hand against their butts just hard enough to let them know he was serious, and it was good-bye to school learning for me.

13

The winter months dragged slowly along now that there was no more play school for me. The children avoided me, but I knew they missed our special times every day, too. I still tried to read their books, and I practiced writing my name, but I couldn’t do any more than that. It made me sad, and I moped around the house. Harriet saw me pouting one afternoon. “Why’s you sad in the mouth, chile? You feelin poorly?”

“No, Ma’am. I cain’t read and write and I don’t reckon I ever will.”

She sighed, folding her large arms across her chest. “Ain’t for you to know readin an writin. Thas white folks bi’ness. Yoll got some foolish thinkin up in yo haid.”

“George Murphy knows readin and writin,” I told her.

“George Murphy was no slave. He be a free man when he come here.”

I thought for a moment. “Is they really a law that say a man ain’t spose to own another man?”

Harriet’s face was thoughtful. “If they’s a law Massuh Beal ain’t knowin it.”

“George Murphy say a man spose to git paid regular wages fuh his work.”

“Humph. That George Murphy, he be big on the talkin side.”

“Harriet, what’s a law?”

“Wal, I dunno zackly for shure, but I do believe it is where they put a big sign up, and everybody what see the sign got to do like it say.”

“Is that all a law be?”

“I do believe that be all it be.”

“Wal, maybe Massuh Beal ain’t see’d the law!”

“Now you’s talkin uppity!”

It was very confusing to me, but I didn’t want to ask any more questions. “Uppity” is what they called George Murphy.

When the children came home from school, I would be waiting to unhitch the pony. Thomas began to toss off orders at me and talk crudely like he hadn’t done before. He grew less friendly and more mean and nasty.

John, who had always been mean, grew worse. One day he and Thomas lay waiting for me, and as I rounded a corner, carrying wood to the kitchen, they leaped at me to wrestle me, but I was taught not to fight back. This leaping out of nowhere at me became a habit. Since I was not allowed to fight back, I tried to cover my face with my hands and hunched my body to protect myself. Sometimes I would try to run, but they always caught me and wrestled me to the ground. They must have thought it was fun punching at me like a lifeless sack of flour, me being all limp and floppy and not fighting back.

One warm Sunday morning in early spring, more visitors arrived at the plantation. We had been preparing for their arrival for days. I watched them coming and then hurried alongside Big Mac to unhitch their buggy. They were a handsome family. The father was dressed fine, and he had dark hair combed straight back and slicked good, and the missus was stout with a round face and big hands. The three children were fat and looked very uncomfortable in shiny shoes with stockings up to their knees. I guessed they were around my age. Big Mac and I carried their bags and parcels up to their rooms in the Big House.

After their evening meal, the two families went strolling on the grounds outside. I heard Master call for me. “Robert! Come here!” I came running.

“Yessuh, Massuh Beal, suh!”

Then he turned eagerly to his sons. “Okay, boys, let’s have us a wrestlin match.”

He meant me and his boys, one at a time. Did he expect me to wrestle them? I didn’t know what to do, but one thing I had learned well was to do nothing. Thomas came at me first and I went down immediately. Massuh was yelling, “Harder, harder! Come on, Robert, show us what yer made of!” Before I knew it, I was yanked to my feet and there was a lot of cheering and yelling. Then John lunged at me, grabbing me around the neck. We rolled down in the dirt as he punched at me. Again, I was a sack of flour just waiting for it to be over. I could hear the others hollering, “Fight! Fight!”

Out of the corner of my eye I saw the faces of the visiting boys. The oldest one had spit running out of his mouth, and he was grinning a horrible grin. John kept hitting me and even though he was nowhere near as strong as me, I let him go on hitting

“Oh, gimme a lick at im!” shouted one of the boys. “Gimme a lick at im!”

There followed then a series of dirty punches and pinches. One of them pulled down my trousers. Another sat on me. I couldn’t help myself. I started crying.

When they were finished with their fun, they went skipping off, laughing and out of breath, to the stable to get horses for riding.

I could smell honeysuckle through the dust and blood in my nostrils and I could hear insects chirping happily in the grass. The sun was beginning to set and the sky was bright red. From the branches of a willow elm a few feet away I could hear the high, squeaky singing of a cowbird.

———

It was many days before I could walk without limping, and each day I dragged my body through my chores, trying not to cry or faint. It was July before I could move normally, although my body was learning how to never be normal again.

Harriet got two new girls to help her with the house, and I was given the added chores of tending the flower beds and keeping the lawn and yard clean. All other hands were in the fields.

One afternoon right out of the blue Master Beal announced, “Robert, you free to git to the quarter when yoll finish with yor chores in the evenings and on Sundays. Don’t do no good seein you lazin around here. But you better do your chores good! And you git back here by a proper time, hear?”

I was overjoyed. Oh, to play with children who were like me! I did my chores that day happily and eagerly. I finished early and ran with a jerky limp to tell Big Mac where I was going. He nodded and stuck some tobacco in his cheek. “Git then,” he said softly.

The squalor of the quarter looked beautiful to me as I approached the shanties. I walked along the dirt and mud around each shack drinking in the smells of salt pork frying and hoe cake baking in the ashes of hearths. I looked at the tiny gardens beside some of the shacks, with carrots, cabbage, and onions growing. The boards that made up the walls of the shacks were far enough apart to lay a dog. The setting sun spread across the land in gold and silver streaks, and the sweat and dirt on the faces shone in the light. My heart swelled to see the faces of my people. Sitting in the dirt or on the wooden planks before their doors, they were like angels—worn, beaten, beautiful angels.

“Robert!” I heard a voice call. I turned and saw Corrie Moore standing and talking with another woman.

“Robert, chile, I declare!”

I ran to her and she grabbed me in her arms. The smell of her was acrid, wet, and wonderful. She crushed me in the cotton of her dress, and I pressed my cheeks against the soft nap of her head.

“What you doin here?”

“Massuh said I can come every night when I finish my chores, and even on Sunday!”

“Wal, thank you, Jesus!” she said.

Soon she was calling people to come and meet me, and then I was surrounded by staring children and smiling grown-ups. Only St. Peter at the pearly gates where Jesus lived was missing.

The time went by quickly. Before I left to go back to the Big House, Corrie took me to her shack to see Buck and one other person. As I entered the shack, I saw Buck sitting on the bed and in his arms was the other person—a tiny newborn baby.

“We done got ourselves a boy-chile,” Corrie announced.

It was a warm and happy reunion. Only for a brief moment did my mind stray back to the last time I was in that cabin, when Pearl lay dying.

“Yoll lookin’ a little fat, chile,” Corrie exclaimed as we sat together in the few remaining moments.

“Ahz?”

“Yoll is.”

We laughed and hugged and I held their new little baby. Later that night back at the Big House my spirits were flying. That’s what love does to you. It feels like freedom.

Night after night I fled to the quarter. The days weren’t so bad because I had something to look forward to.

One Sunday afternoon after the Beals had left for one of their outings, I went to the quarter to play with the children. “Hear come that house nigger!” one of the children spat. I was stunned.

“Hear comes that Tom!”

It was the first time I was called that. It was a terrible insult. I recoiled and stood ready to defend myself.

“They feedin you vanilla cake and tapioca up there in the Big House?”

“Whitey’s favorite little niggerboy, huh!”

“Ha-ha-ha, Robert loves the paleface! Robert loves the paleface!”

I leaped at one of the boys and began to hit him. The other children joined in the fight, and I found myself wildly hitting and punching. I couldn’t fight the white boys in the yard of the Big House, but I could fight back now. I got hold of the boy who called me a Tom and pounded his head on the ground. My rage grew each time his head hit the ground. Then I felt myself being torn from him, and before I knew it I was dangling from the fist of a large Negro man I’d never seen before.

“You tryin to kill somebody, boy?” he growled. “Don’t you come around here causin no trouble, hear? Stay up at the Big House! Now git! Git!”

He dropped me from his grip, and I whirled around furiously, making words as best I could. “I ain’t no Tom! I’sa black nigger slave jes like yoll! Next one call me a Tom I gonna kill!”

I stood my ground and then slowly turned my back on them and walked toward the shacks. Nobody made a move to get me, but I knew what they were thinking. They really believed I was the white folks’ little black puppy and I came to spy on them.

The sun was hot and the air thick and humid. I knew how conspicuous I must have been, but inside me I believed that it was only here that I belonged. I refused to be a coward and run back to the Big House. I wandered around the shanties of the quarter listening to the sounds of the people: singing, babies crying, sounds of people living too close to each other, moving, living, loving, hating; there were smells of liquor, tobacco, sweat, and cabbage cooking.

Moving through the quarter, I looked at the faces of my people. Lined, streaked with sweat, they looked back at me with blank expressions. Word had gotten out that Master Beal had sent his puppy to the quarter to spy on them. But near the end of one row of shacks I saw a face that looked back at me and smiled.

“Hello, honey.” A woman with white hair tied up in a rag, wearing a calico dress and spotted apron, sat on the ground outside her shack.

“Hello, Ma’am,” I answered.

“Whey you from?”

“I be from the Big House, Ma’am.”

“From the Big House? Ohhh, then you up thar wi Harriet and wi lil Daisy who passed—”

“Yes’m.”

“That be Harriet’s shanty right over there.” She pointed to a small wood shack surrounded by grey dirt like all the others, and sitting in front were three small children—just sitting there staring. I wanted to go and talk to them, but I didn’t know what to say.

“Set down, boy,” offered the white-haired woman. Her eyes were kind and friendly.

I sat hesitantly in the dirt, looking across the path at the children in front of Harriet’s shanty. It was hard to imagine Harriet here in the shambles of the quarter when I had only seen her in the environment of the Beal household. I had never seen her with a black baby in her arms, and these little ones in the dirt looked like they were in desperate need of a Mammy to hold them.

The old woman saw me staring at the children.

“Jerry! Amos! Agatha! Come over here!”

The children looked up and with listless movements ambled over to where we were sitting. “Massuh done tuk me out the field and set me to keerin for the chillrens,” the woman told me. “These here babies is some a mah babies.” She folded them into her arms, and they seemed to melt into her. She kissed their heads and smoothed their cheeks with her bent and gnarled fingers.

“Whatcho name, chile?”

“Robert, Ma’am.”

“This here be Robert, chillren, he work wi yor Mammy up in the Big House.” The children brightened somewhat.

I stayed there for over an hour. The old woman’s name was Ceily. She seemed to be peaceful, and I found that I liked talking with her.

“You say yo prayers, chile?” she asked me off-handedly.

“Prayers?” I asked, surprised. “I don’t reckon so, Ma’am.”

“Yoll don’t pray?” she asked incredulously.

“No, Ma’am,” I answered, wondering if I had done something wrong.

“Well, I don’t reckon I know how you done lived this long,” she said. “Mus be the Lord savin you for the day when yoll look up at Him an shout, Hallelujah, Jesus!”

“Hunh?”

“Whey’s yo Mammy?”

“She daid, Ma’am.”

“Didn’t she never pray wid you, boy?”

I thought for a moment. A picture of my mother sailed through my head. I saw her fine high cheeks, her large sad eyes, her light brown skin. I heard her voice again singing softly in the hot, empty cabin.

I blinked and said in a low voice, “I reckon my Mama done prayed, Ma’am.”

“Yoll know what ah’m gonna do ri now?” Miss Ceily asked with a broad smile.

“No, Ma’am.”

“I’m gonna pray fo yoll. Right now. Ah’m gonna pray the good Lord come an show you how He died fo yor sins so’s you kin go to heaven when you die.”

“Heaven?” I said. “No, no. I ain’t goin to no heaven.”

“Chile! What you say!”

“No, heaven be fo white folk.”

“What you talking bout?”

“Me, I wants to go where my mama be, an Ella and Pearl—with Jesus.”

She looked at me funny. “Ef that don’t beat all.”

Amos wiggled in her arms and she kissed his cheek.

“I figured it out,” I said.

She lifted a hand and placed it on my head, and in a soft, droning voice prayed to a heavenly Father she seemed to know personally. “Lord, hepp this chile . . .”

She ran her fingers along my cheek, “Honey, who done tole you heaven is jes fo white folk?”

Her touch was sweet, gentle. I wasn’t used to such a touch. I stared at her.

“Chile, don’t you pay no mind to them lies.”

Her face was so kind, without teeth and with deep creases and milky eyes. “Ceily, do Jesus live in heaven?”

“Yes, chile. He do.”

“And do they be colored people in heaven?”

“Yes, chile. They be.”

She laughed and gave my head a rub. Jerry, Amos, and Agatha laughed with her.

I felt kind of light and happy inside. “Fo a fact?”

“I spect so, chile, I spect so.”

She prayed again for me. Prayed that I would come to know the Lord and serve Him. “Come back and see me, chile,” she said.

I left her there with Harriet’s children on her lap and made my way through the rows of shacks to the path leading to the Big House.

I deliberately passed the boys who had bullied me. If I ran from them, I’d never have face in the quarter. They watched me but didn’t do or say anything. I passed Buck and Corrie’s shanty, and they were sitting outside against the house in the heated shade. “Oh, Robert,” Corrie called as I came near. “I done forgot to tell yoll!”

“Ma’am?”

“Yoll be eight years old now!”

14

I was not too eager to return to the quarter after the fight with the colored boys. I didn’t want any more trouble, and I knew what happened to spies or traitors. I wondered if that’s not why Master Beal allowed me to go to the quarter, so I’d spy for him and get killed for doing it. I was no spy. I was no traitor. I’d just stay away from the quarter. I began, instead, to take long walks around the plantation. I discovered the location of the dreaded overseers’ houses. To my amazement, they were little better than the shacks the slaves lived in. Thrasher’s house was a small white-washed cabin with a tiny garden growing alongside it and a small shed for his horse and tools. I saw Mrs. Thrasher hanging out clothes on the clothesline, and playing around her were some raggedy babies.

On the afternoons I’d hide in the tall weeds and watch the slaves in the field hoeing cotton. I saw the whip rise and fall and I heard the low, mournful voices singing and groaning as they labored.

There was never a time when I left the Big House that Big Mac didn’t know it. Sometimes he would be in the yard cleaning fish or in the back kitchen putting up pork, but he always knew when I was gone. When I returned, he’d be waiting for me. “Watch yo’self, boy,” he’d warn me. And if Master was drunk or in an evil temper, this was what I needed to know to keep out of his way.

One day as I returned from a walk in the woods alongside the far field, Mac was pulling water from the well on the porch. With one look, I knew there was danger in the kitchen. I ran from the porch and hid alongside the house, and from there I could hear Mistress beating the new house girl who had not pleased her in some chore.

The girl was about thirteen, pretty, with very black skin and a strong body. Her name was Tennessee. Mistress didn’t take to her and she didn’t like her name; she took to calling her Carolina instead. Tennessee didn’t like the name Carolina because, she said, “My mama done name me Tennessee, that’s where I be borned,” and she refused to answer to Carolina.

“You in Carolina now, girl!” Missus hollered, but Tennessee didn’t flinch. She looked like she was bored when Missus hollered at her.

Tennessee never moved quickly enough and never seemed to be afraid of Master or Mistress. Whenever Mistress screamed at her or hit her, she just sneered or looked at her with that cold look in her eye. There was nothing Mistress could do to break her.

Then one afternoon when Master was in the house, Tennessee sat down at the white folks’ table and buttered herself a piece of bread. Even Mary Webb was shocked. She reached for a knife to throw, but as she did, Master entered the room. “I’ll handle this!” Tennessee didn’t even look up. She just took a bite of the bread and sat chomping on it. Master watched her eat the whole thing and didn’t say a word. I thought sure there’d be a whupping. But Master Beal just turned, left, and didn’t even say one word.

Living in the house that summer was like sitting on a keg of dynamite. There were always fights. Mistress and Master fought and yelled at one another whenever they were together. The overseers fought, too, because there was a lot of rivalry and jealousy among them.

I got up the courage to run to the quarter during these months to see Miss Ceily. She was always happy to see me. I would help her with the children in her charge if I could. One of Tennessee’s chores was to carry the large caldron of corn mush at noontime for the children, and she would linger a moment to talk. Miss Ceily was so filled with compassion and mercy that Tennessee warmed up to her right away.

One of Miss Ceily’s sons was sick in bed. His name was John Henry, and he was about eighteen years old. He had worked in the field since he was eleven. The bed he lay in was only a 12-inch slab of wood with a little pile of sticks for a pillow. In the humidity and heat, the floor of the shanty smelled of wet earth. I sat with John Henry and dipped cool water on his face. He had the fever and moaned all day. Ceily prayed over him and didn’t seem to be at all worried about his condition. “The Lord’s healin is on him,” she said confidently.

One day when Tennessee came with the mush for the children, she had a jar of honey tucked under her skirts, which she presented to Ceily. “It’s for yo son who be ailin, Ma’am,” she said.

Ceily took it, and they came into the cabin to John Henry’s bedside, where I was sitting. I saw John’s face when he saw Tennessee. It was as though a little light went on in his eyes.

John Henry got well just like Ceily said he would and was back picking cotton in a couple of days.

Every chance Tennessee got, she would be at Ceily’s shanty or else John Henry would be at the shanty where Tennessee lived. I noticed that Tennessee was becoming a little more lively.

On a bright August morning when the slaves were all in the field and I was helping peel apples in the kitchen, I was given charge of baby Anna again. I wasn’t very happy about it.

“Why can’t Tennessee or one of the girls mind Anna?”

“Yors ain’t to question, Robert. Massuh done gived the order.”

I wanted to dislike the blond-haired girl. I had no intention of treating her with any kindness.

“Go ’head an’ climb up on Robert’s lap, honey,” Miss Harriet prodded.

Anna looked up at me with sparkling blue eyes and a shy smile, and then she threw open her arms and climbed into my lap. Her arms went around my neck, and she giggled softly close to my cheek.

Her face was filled with trust, and she had no mischief in her eyes.

“Robert’s gonna mind yoll now, hear?”

Little Anna giggled and seemed very pleased with the idea.

With her trusting look, happy nature, and loving personality, Anna brought back memories of my own little sister, Ella. I found myself playing the games Ella and I had played, and once again I had the love and trust of a small child.

I was embarrassed to be Anna’s “maid” though, and I hated it when other slaves saw me minding her. I knew they were calling me a sissy and a Tom. It made me angry. Sometimes I took this anger out on Anna.

“Come here, Anna!”

“Whatchoo want, Robert?”

“I’m gonna whup yor hide.”

“Ahhhhhhhhh!”

I’d scare her practically out of her wits, but then I would never hurt her. If she cried, I’d feel a certain sense of fulfillment.

One Sunday afternoon when the Beal family was gone, I went down to the quarter to visit Miss Ceily. She was praying for her son, Little William, when I got there. Little William was about twelve years old and his mind didn’t seem right. He would take to yelling at the air or kicking and throwing his body around as though something invisible were attacking him.

I sat with her outside the shanty with John Henry, and I got to talking about Anna. Miss Ceily heard our talk and she didn’t like the part about my bullying her around.

“Child, you need Jesus.”

I looked at her, surprised.

“Did you ever ast Jesus to fill yor heart and forgive yor sins?”

“Not to my rememberin.”

“Well, that’s what you need to do. You need salvation, that’s what you need. You is doin an evil thing up there in that Big House scarin that chile, and the Lord want you to repent of it and ast Him to save you so’s you kin be His boy instead of the devil’s. A man’s revenge don’t mean nothin, chile. It’s the Lord who do the revengin. He know how better’n any man know.”

“Revengin?”

“I want you to git on yor knees, boy, and I’m gonna learn yoll how to pray.”

I did as she said, and I heard myself talking to an invisible person, Jesus. John Henry quietly prayed beside me on his knees.

Something happened to me that day. I knew even then that something had taken place, something mysterious. Ceily told me to pray every day, and she began to teach me what she called the Lord’s Prayer.

“Our Father which awt in heav’n . . .”

Cotton-picking time was the worst time of year for the slaves because they were driven so hard. After they returned to their homes at night, they had the cooking for the family to do and the tending of their own tiny gardens. They had only a few hours in which to sleep at night—oversleeping meant a whupping.

Then something terrible happened. Ceily’s boy, Little William, turned on his mama. Ceily found out he took money from the overseers to give information about the folk in the quarter. Nobody realized Little William was sneaking around listening to conversations and trying to find out if anybody was planning on escaping or if anyone was saying bad things about the master.

“His mind is tore up,” Ceily lamented. “Jesus, hepp him, hepp him.”

Then, all of a sudden, Little William disappeared. Nobody knew what happened to him. Some said he escaped. He was missing for several days when finally he was found in the swamp under a cypress tree. His throat had been sliced from one ear to the other, and birds had already begun to eat on him.

When they lowered Little William into the grave, Miss Ceily said quietly under her breath, “Jesus done answered my prayer. He helped him. He’s in glory now.”

Autumn was on its way. It was time for the white children to return to school. I had heard about a Negro school not far from us, and I once again began begging to go to school. It was hopeless. Master wouldn’t hear of it. “Schoolin and learnin ain’t for niggers!”

Having charge of Anna all day long made it almost impossible to get to the quarter. I had to stay near the Big House with her. The only time I could escape the prison of the Big House was on Sundays if the Beal family went visiting.

Thomas and John continued to enjoy their sport of jumping me. One cool Sunday afternoon they both jumped me right outside the kitchen door. I drew up with every bit of energy in me, took them both by their straight, slippery hair and with a swift surge of strength crashed their heads together. They fell to the ground, and I then pulled them up one at a time and smacked them in the belly and chest with my fists. When they got up I hit John so hard he went flying across the dirt. When Thomas saw that, he took off running. I knew I would get a terrible beating from Master Beal for what I did, but I knew I could lick both of those boys, and I didn’t care.

Big Mac had seen the whole thing from the smokehouse, where he had been working. When he came into the kitchen later he was whistling, and then he hopped around doing a little dance.

Tell me, Jim, whatcha got in tha bag,

Oh Mary, Oh Mary,

Saw a nigger whup the massuh’s boys,

Law diddie, Law diddie, Law dee day.

Saw that nigger done whup they hide,

Oh Mary, Oh Mary,

Massuh goin whup that nigger tonight.

Law diddie, Law diddie, Law dee day.

I joined him in his whimsical dance.

I whup em once, and I’ll whup em again,

Oh Mary, Oh Mary . . .

I was delighted to see Big Mac’s approval of what I had done. It was worth the whuppin I was going to receive.

It came sometime after supper. Master Beal dragged me out behind the barn and made me lie down on my belly. He whupped me just once with the buggy trace. I pushed my face down hard in the ground so I wouldn’t cry out. As I followed him back to the house I still felt good about having taken his two boys. When we got halfway across the yard, Master turned to me, and with a funny kind of gesture he said, “I don’t like to whup you, boy; mind yo’self so’s I don’t have to do it again. I’ll turn Thrasher on yoll next time.”

I thought for just the tiniest second that he was trying to tell me he didn’t like hitting me, not because it wore him out but because he liked me. The idea was crazy, but I kept it in my mind and I studied on it.

The winter of 1919 passed, as did the frenzied spring of 1920 with cultivating and planting. That spring Tennessee gave birth to a baby boy in her little shack by the house, and she named him Amos because she had heard that her father’s name was Amos. Master moved Tennessee and the baby to a cabin away from the Big House. I think he was afraid Mistress knew the baby had a white daddy and would try to do something evil to them.

The summer of 1920 was hot and long, and I was given permission to take Anna to the creek to wade and play. “Do you gots a mama, Robert?” Anna asked me one day.

I looked at her large blue eyes. “No, chile, I don’t got no mama. My mama daid.”

“Do you gots a daddy?” For a minute I saw white lights pass before my eyes, like lightning. The thought of my father aroused in me a sudden, unexpected fury.

“Hunh?”

“Do you gots a daddy?”

“. . . Ah reckon ah gots a daddy, Miz Anna.”

“Do he be a nice man like my daddy be?”

I looked at her little upturned face, the round cheeks just right for tweaking. “Ah reckon so, yes, ah reckon so. My daddy be jes right nice like yo daddy be.”

I sat at the edge of the creek, my feet stretched out into the water. Anna sat close to me digging her toes in the mud.

“Robert, you knows what?”

“Uh.”

“Robert, you be’s my honey baby. I love you!” She threw her arms around me, laughing happily.

Anna would tell me what she learned in Sunday school each week.

“Jesus, He come down to be the Savior,” Anna explained.

“Whey’d He come from?”

“He come from the heaven. He come because He want the people to love God. It say so in the Bible.”

“Some day, Anna, you’ll be able to read the Bible, and then you can teach me all about Jesus.”

Anna sang a little song that went

He washed my sins away,

He washed my sins away,

Now I’m white, white like snow,

for He washed my sins away.

These words haunted me. I remembered what Mistress Beal had said about the sins black people had committed that made our skins black and forever in debt to the white folk as their slaves. I wondered if there was a way for me to get my sins washed away and be made white as snow. But why would God make a sinner like me white and not Miss Ceily? She was a praying lady. Surely she would be the first one He would wash til she was white.

Miss Ceily calmed me on the matter.

“Honey, you is washed clean jes for the astin,” she told me. “When yoll ast Jesus to forgive yor sins, He does it. That means you is washed clean from yor sins. Don’t mean no color of yor skin; it mean the color of yor soul. Sin make the soul full of darkness. Full of the shadowy substance. But when the love of Jesus come through and you gits forgiveness from yor sins, then you is washed clean—yor soul is white as snow.”

“Uh. But a colored person ain’t got no soul.”

Miss Ceily reeled on her heels. “Lissen to me, chile, don’t you lissen to them lies, you hear me? Don’t you lissen to them lies! When the white man tell you them lies, yoll jes wag yor head, ‘Yes’m, Nossuh, Yes’m,’ but don’t you pay them no mind. They’s a-lyin to you!”

“Yes, Ma’am.”

Ceily explained to me that God loved me and cared about me. It was very hard to understand, and I didn’t grasp most of what she told me. She prayed over me and asked God to show me that He cared about this “poor lil ole nigger chile.”

In the shanty farthest down the line, behind a clump of trees, a party was in full swing. I could hear the music and the singing and the slapping of feet on the dirt floor. When I left Miss Ceily, I walked toward the bleached wooden shack where the party was going on. Somebody had a homemade banjo, somebody else played the sticks, and there was a drum made out of a piece of tree trunk with a skin stretched across it, and above it all were the loud, exuberant sounds of singing.

I stood in the doorway and peered into the shack lit only by one kerosene lamp. I watched as the men and women stomped and danced together, laughing and hooting. Children were lined along the walls, too, as well as outside the shanty. The air was thick with the smells of whiskey, tobacco, and sweat. I stood riveted in place watching the bodies of the men and women twirl and whirl and strut and jump in the dim light of the room. I felt a thrill inside like I’d never felt. I couldn’t help but dance, too.

There was a formal kind of dance that had to be learned when we “set the floor.” It was done with a glass of water on the head. Then we’d do another dance inside a circle trying not to go outside the lines. I forgot all time and stayed until way past midnight learning the dances and feeling myself let loose.

The next morning I asked Big Mac if I could go to the little church that the slaves attended. He wasn’t too happy about my leaving the house. He made it very clear I had to be back before Master and the family returned from the church they attended, which was only about a mile down the road.

I scrubbed my face and put on my only clothes. Harriet had shown me how to clean myself and wash my teeth with salt. I washed my clothes about once a month, and I bathed without soap whenever I went to the creek.

I walked to the meeting place with Miss Ceily and her sons, John Henry, Isaiah, Jerry-Ben, Fred, and Boot. We walked slowly and silently in the morning sun. The smell of honeysuckle was thick and sweet, and insects sang their loud earth songs along the path as though heralding us on our way. Miss Ceily wore a black dress with a worn, lacy collar. The boys wore clean overalls and tow shirts. All of us were barefoot.

The church was a shack made out of logs with hay and mud stuffed in the cracks. There were two openings for windows with wooden boards that pulled across them when they needed to be closed. Inside were wooden benches to sit on and a pulpit for the preacher. Because it was such a lovely day, the door this morning was closed and we filed by, following a path leading to the narrow creek that flowed into the Savannah River.

There was a cluster of people already gathered by the little creek in a shaded clearing when we arrived. There were many warm greetings and embraces. The meeting began with singing. The singing went on and on. I felt elevated in the music, lifted far beyond anything I had ever experienced. Even better than the music last night.

There were songs filled with ecstasy and joy, songs that were lamenting and sad. They were a part of me, a part of everything I felt and knew. In the dark and untapped places of my mind that day, I began to understand who I was and what I was made of.

There might have been a hundred of us there, I didn’t know: maybe ten, twenty. I only knew the joy of belonging and the closeness of the God Miss Ceily had been telling me about.

I didn’t get back to the Big House until afternoon. Big Mac was angry. “Massuh’s been back for two hours! Chile, I ought to whup you!”

The excitement of the morning faded as I went to find Anna and begin my work around the Big House. I wanted to tell Big Mac all about the meeting in the woods. I wanted to tell him how the Negro preacher had told us that one day we wouldn’t have any more troubles and that Jesus would take all our troubles from us. One day. He told us that God would help us be strong and He was with us through all our trials. I guessed that if Master Beal knew that the Negro preacher was telling us things like that, he’d have him strung up high on a tree. I prayed that the Lord wouldn’t allow that to happen. And then I prayed something very strange. I prayed that the Lord would forgive Master Beal.

15

In 1921 I turned ten years old. On a starry Saturday night in September, the Beals were invited to a party at another plantation. Master Beal was now the proud owner of a new automobile.

That Saturday night when I saw Buck Moore walk through the kitchen door of the Big House, I jumped with surprise.

“Buck!”

“Hello, Robert.”

“What you doin here?”

“I is Massuh Beal’s chauffeur now. He done come down and give me this new job. Even give us a cabin closer to the house so’s I can be right near when he need me.”

Buck and Corrie near the house! That night he chauffeured the Beals to their party. I watched from the parlor window as they drove off, and I trembled with excitement. I had never seen such a fine automobile, and to see Buck sitting up so clean and slick driving it made me very proud. He was wearing clean overalls, and he looked young and strong.

While Master Beal was at the party, Tennessee escaped from the plantation. She ran off with John Henry and the baby.

Master Beal didn’t realize she was gone until late Sunday afternoon. He went crazy when he found out. The hounds were sent out after them, and he hollered for Buck to drive him to the train station in town. His friends rallied together, and the search was on. I prayed with all my heart that they wouldn’t catch them.

“Please, please, can I go to Miss Ceily?” I begged Big Mac.

“Yoll ain’t goin no place,” Big Mac exclaimed, his jaw tight, and I knew it was a dangerous time for all of us, and we’d all have to lay low and wait for news of Tennessee and John Henry.

The hours went by. Juanita and Virginia, the Beals’ daughters, played tea party on the lawn beside the summer porch. Their laughter, like high-pitched bells, could be heard above the oppressive silence in the house. Mary Webb was overly busy in the kitchen preparing sweet potato pies and baking a ham for the white folks’ supper, and Harriet had run down to the quarter to be with her children. Big Mac sat in the shadows of the kitchen porch by the well rolling Master’s cigarettes.

If Tennessee and John Henry were to make it to freedom safely, it would be a victory for every slave on the plantation. We would each know a little greatness for a time. But if they were captured, their torture would belong to all of us, and we would moan on our pallets sharing their defeat. Sweat rolled down my body as I waited by the window in the children’s bedroom while Miss Anna took her afternoon nap.

Evening came and Mistress Beal ate the sweet potato pie and baked ham with her children without Master. There was no word at all. Mistress behaved oddly, and I heard Mary Webb say she was drunk. When they had finished eating, she took the children into the music room, and we heard the piano playing simple two-part melodies. I knew Juanita was performing. She played haltingly, studying the music every time the position of her fingers changed.

Nightfall came. Juanita played on and on. The stop-and-start sounds wore on everyone’s nerves, especially Mistress Beal’s. She paced the floor of the parlor like a cat. I dressed Anna in her soft cotton nightgown and held her on my lap before putting her into her bed for the night.

“Robert,” she cooed, snuggling her face against my chest, “Robert, when I get big—”

“Yes, Miz Anna?”

“When I get big, will you marry me?”

I laughed until tears came. I was afraid I might burst into sobbing and so I lifted her from my lap, set her down firmly on the floor, and said without courage, “I declare, chile!”

“Don’t you love me, Robert?”

“Well, I ’spect I do.”

“Then we can get married!”

I didn’t answer her, and she bubbled on. “I’ll have to have a pretty dress and pretty white shoes, you know. Then I’ll tell my chillren to be very, very quiet and you kin kiss me, too.”

“Uhm.”

“I love you, my Robert. I love you bestest in all the world. You’s my honey baby.”

It was after midnight when the sound of horses’ hooves woke me. I sat upright, listening. The other children didn’t stir. I slid out of my bed and walked across the bare floor to the window. I could see nothing. I tiptoed out of the room and down the hall to the dining room. The room smelled of stale smoke and liquor. From the window I could see the driveway plainly in the moonlight.

There were at least ten horses. The moon was full and shone on the forms on the horses. My heart pounded in my chest when I saw the riders. They looked like monsters from hell, like ghosts, apparitions of the dead. I held my breath for fear one of them might see me through the window and slay me with one evil look. They were all in white, like sails of ships that I had seen in the children’s books. Their faces were covered with hoods, and they all carried rifles and sticks. It could have been the end of the world, and I wouldn’t have been more terrified. So this is what I had heard about and never seen—this was the Ku Klux—the devil himself.

Shaking, I held on to the edge of the curtain. They were shouting back and forth. One of the apparitions descended from his horse and strode to the front door. I froze where I was. The knocker sounded. It was loud and unmistakable. I didn’t move from where I was. Who would answer the door? Mistress surely wouldn’t. Big Mac was sleeping in the back of the house. I was the only servant around.

The knocking continued. “Sam!” a voice shouted. “Sam Beal!”

Then I heard a sound behind me. My heart stopped. I turned slowly, without breathing. A man was sitting across the room from me in a straight-backed chair with his elbows on the dining room table. It was Master Beal! He must have been there when I crept in to watch out the window.

“Answer the door, boy,” he said in a growling whisper.

“Yessuh, Massuh Beal, suh.”

I hurried to the door and, with shaking hands, opened it.

“Whey the boss man?” asked the robed form before me. Speechless, I simply pointed toward the dining room. The form marched into the house.

“Ain’t you got no lights here?” the creature asked.

“Light the lamp, boy,” Master said.

I scrambled for the kerosene lamp by the door. My fingers were trembling, and I could hardly hold the match.

Seeing Sam Beal, the figure announced, “We got the man down by the hollow.”

“What about the girl?”

“Nah. Jes him. You want to hang him tonight or tomorrow?”

“Tonight! Hang the devil tonight!”

I could hardly keep myself from crying out. Caught! Lord, no!

I was so frightened I nearly fainted. I wanted to scream, to protest, but it would have been useless.

“I want that nigger dead,” Master Beal said quietly.

When they left the house, Master Beal could hardly walk. He stumbled over his own feet in a drunken attempt to move quickly.

“We’ll take my car!”

Somewhere between the house and the hollow where poor John Henry awaited his fate, Master Beal donned his white Ku Klux regalia. I ran to the back of the house to rouse Big Mac. I cried out to God for mercy and clung to Big Mac, trying not to sob. When the sound of the horses and the engine of the car died in the distance, I flew out of the house, down the driveway, around the yard, and onto the path leading to the quarter. When I arrived at Miss Ceily’s cabin, I found her on her knees in front of the hearth. Her face was drawn and wet with tears. She had not stopped praying since John Henry and Tennessee had fled.

She didn’t know he had been captured.

“Miz Ceily! Oh, Miz Ceily!” I cried when I found her.

She turned and opened her arms to me. The other boys were fast asleep, and the cabin was still. I ran to her, crying.

She held me in her long, hard arms and said, “Son, the Lord hisself jes spoke to me. He tole me John Henry will be all right.”

I began to sob uncontrollably. Poor Miss Ceily. The noise awakened the other boys.

“Is John Henry all right?” Isaiah asked, frightened.

“Yes, son, yes,” answered Ceily. “The Lord has jes tole me he is all right.”

I cried so hard, the other boys were suspicious. “Has you heard something?” Isaiah asked finally, drawing near to me and kneeling down where I was sitting on the floor.

Between sobs, I explained that they had caught John Henry and had him down in the hollow.

“They’s gonna hang him tonight!” I cried.

Miss Ceily’s face did not move a tick.

Isaiah pounded his fist on the dirt floor. There was nothing any of us could do. There was nobody to turn to for help.

Except One.

“The Lord has done said John Henry is all right,” Miss Ceily repeated. “Until they carry a dead man through this door and lay him at my feet and tell me, ‘This is yor son, John Henry,’ ah am gonna believe God!”

I stayed for about an hour; then Isaiah insisted I go back to the Big House. “It’s dangerous for you to be here,” he told me. “Theys killin in the air!” He was right. If I got caught between the house and the quarter, they could justify anything by saying I was trying to escape or I was stealing or conspiring.

I fell into a fitful sleep when the dawn was just beginning to brush across the tops of the trees outside the children’s bedroom window. I slept only a few moments before it was time to rise and begin the day’s work. I hurried through my tasks. The overseers marched in for breakfast in their dining room, and I hung around near the door to hear their conversation. Surely they would talk about the hanging last night. They didn’t talk at all this morning, though, and the only sounds I heard were forks scraping plates, lips smacking, chewing and gulping.

When they left for the fields, I was confused. Why didn’t they talk about the hanging? Surely they knew!

Finally, we heard the master’s car pull into the drive. Master Beal wasn’t driving. Buck was. Big Mac hurried around the car, opened the door, and stood looking inside. I watched from the porch steps.

“He’s passed out,” Buck told Big Mac. “Here, help me get him upstairs.” Together the two men lifted the drunk form of Master Beal out of the car and carried him inside. When Buck and Big Mac came to the kitchen, there was nobody there but Mary Webb and me.

“Set yourself down,” Big Mac told Buck. We went to the slaves’ table and bench. “This story you jes ain’t gonna believe,” Buck began. “You jes ain’t gonna believe it. The likes of it ain’t never happened in this here world.”

“What is it?” Mary brought the men hot cups of coffee.

Buck wagged his head and then began. “Las night the master and the Kluxes went down to the hollow to string up John Henry. See, they found him jes outside of Belton walkin along the railroad track. Tennessee had got on the train and was far gone.” He took a swallow of the coffee.

“They was no way of catchin up with her. John Henry, he had only nuff money to buy one ticket, so he put Tennessee and her baby on the train, and he took to walkin.”

He held the cup with both hands and shook his head. “Guess Massuh knowed they’d try to get on a train, so he went to the stations right off. Well, when they picked up John Henry, they beat him and tole him they was gonna kill him. They carried him to the hollow over by Savannah River to hang him.”

He paused. “And so I spect we knows the rest,” Mary Webb said.

“But here’s the part you ain’t gonna believe,” Buck said, his voice going lower. “Ah declare, I never see’d nothin like it.”

“Come on, man, tell us!” Big Mac’s face said he wasn’t sure he wanted to hear what Buck had to say, but he might as well say it and get it done with.

Buck took another swallow of coffee and licked his lips. “How it went was, Massuh come back home to get some whiskey or somethin or another, and then he come an wake me up an tell me to drive the car to the hollow. Wal, we gits to the hollow, and I sees John Henry lyin there on the ground. They done beat him all right, and he ain’t making no sound; he is jes lyin there, quiet-like. I’m thinking mebbe he daid already. Massah, he actin crazy. He holler at John Henry lyin there. ‘Where she go? Where she at?’ I stay in the car, shut my eyes. I don’t want to see him beat on John Henry no more.”

I started to feel sick to my stomach. Buck shook his head again and gave a sigh. “So Massuh sez, he sez he don’t want to hang him here; he sez, ‘We’ll hang him on the hill by my horse barn. That way all my other niggers will see him.’ So he tells his friends to throw John Henry in the trunk of his car. They throws John Henry in the trunk of the car, and then they gits on their horses and ride off.

“Massuh tells me to drive, and so I starts drivin. ‘Faster! Faster!’ he yells at me, so I drives faster. ‘Can’t you make this devil go no faster?’ he yells, and so I say ‘Yessuh,’ and I come down on the pedal hard. ‘Faster! Faster!’ Massuh yells, and we jes rippin up the road. I don’t know where he’s havin me drive to because we long past his farm. But we go faster and faster and he yellin and cursin and pullin on his whiskey. Then he tells me to git back, and so I turn and we rip back to the farm for to hang John Henry.”

Big Mac’s face had turned grey in the early morning light.

“You ain’t gonna believe this now,” Buck went on. “We gits out of the car. The other men are waiting in those white sheets of theirs. They open the trunk and look inside the trunk—and they ain’t no John Henry!”

“Wal now!” Big Mac exclaimed. Mary Webb slapped her hips.

“Thet John Henry is jes plumb gone outa that trunk! Look like it opened while we was ripping along, and John Henry he musta roll on out. We went back to look for him, but he be long gone now.”

I hooted with joy. “Hallelujah!” I shouted. “John Henry be a free man!”

“An’ I reckon he’ll stay free this time,” Big Mac said, pounding his knee with a cackle.

“If’n he got to town, he’ll be all right. No hounds’ll pick him up there.”

“I declare,” Big Mac sighed. “I do declare, God hisself musta come an open that there trunk and let that boy out.”

“I believe so,” I said.

16

Harvesttime of 1921 saw plenty of work on the plantation. The men and women were in the fields before dawn, ready to work. The work in the Big House began before dawn, too, and I was given added chores. Carrying water to the overseers in the fields was the hardest. I tried hard not to spill as I climbed the hill and stumbled along the uneven dirt paths the quarter of a mile or more to the overseers, but more often than not water spilled out of the pails and I would be punished.

When I arrived at my destination, breathless and dripping wet with sweat, with the heavy two-gallon buckets, Thrasher would sometimes tip them over, dumping the water on the ground, and order me to go and fill them up again. “Don’t spill any this time!” he would cackle.

I’d fight tears of anger as I struggled toting those buckets. It was a job I had for nearly three years.

I had eaten my supper one night when an awful pain in my jaw made me gasp. “You ailin, boy?” Big Mac asked, without looking up from his dish.

“I believe my tooth is ailin.”

And ail it did. In a week’s time my face was swollen twice its normal size, and I was dizzy with pain. Big Mac told Master Beal about it, and he came into the kitchen to see it.

“Ain’t nothin I can do except take you to the dentist in Anderson, I reckon,” he said. To the dentist! It sounded so wonderful to me, I wanted to throw my hands in the air and shout for joy. That meant a trip in the buggy, or possibly the new car! I hadn’t been off the plantation since I had been bought by Master Beal.

He called me the next morning after he had been to the field for a couple of hours. “Git in the buggy,” he commanded. I hurried outside, fetched the horse, hitched her up to the buggy, and then climbed aboard and waited. Master Beal came out soon, and we started on the journey to Anderson. I stayed near him because the road was filled with holes and very bumpy. When it got really bad, I took hold of his coattail and hung on for dear life. He never did slap my hand away. This simple gesture of holding his coattail meant as much to me as a warm embrace and a kiss. After all, he didn’t push me away from him, and he was taking me to the dentist! Maybe he cared about me!

The town of Anderson bristled with activity. I gazed with wide eyes at the store-lined Market Street. The sun shone on the low buildings as we drove up the sloping hill and pulled in front of a large, white corner building.

The dentist was a young white man with what seemed to be a kindly face.

“Well, where’s the Hudson today, Sam?”

“My man is picking cotton,” Master explained. “Need him more in the field than in the car.”

The dentist smiled and nodded his head in understanding.

“What have we here?” he asked.

“This here boy got a toothache, Doc, and I’d like you to fix him up.”

“Sure enough, Sam. Come here, boy.”

I went into a small room with a window that overlooked a grassy empty lot. “Open your mouth,” the dentist told me.

“Uh oh. You got yorself an abscess. I’ll have to pull out the tooth and let the poison drain out.”

He strapped my arms to the chair and then he took a tool like a blacksmith’s pliers from his drawer, clamped hold of my tooth, and began to yank. It was a chipping and yanking and grinding process and I screamed and howled and wailed miserably until he finally got the tooth out. Master Beal had told him he didn’t have more money for a pain killer because, after all, I was a nigger.

I hobbled out of the office somehow with cotton wadding stuffed into my mouth to catch the blood and pus. Master Beal did consent to some medication for me, but with great reluctance. “If he doesn’t take this, the poison could spread through his body and then you’ll have a bigger problem on yor hands,” the dentist explained.

“All right, give me the stuff. I’ll see that he takes it.”

The ride home was agony. I wept bitterly in the back of the buggy. This pain was worse than a hundred whuppings with the cow lash.

Once back at the plantation, Master ordered me to get the water to the men in the field. My face was fiery hot, and my entire body ached. I couldn’t speak at all. I wouldn’t even try to form words in my mouth.

Thrasher saw my face and laughed his mean laugh. “Somebody ought to shoot you and put you out of your misery.”

“Yeah,” mocked one of the drivers, “why don’t you shoot him right through the haid now?”

“Maybe this boy would like a bullet through the head; would you, boy?”

“Oh, come on now, Thrasher,” jibed the driver. “Give him a chance! Let him at least run for his life!”

Thrasher laughed, “Yeah!” He pulled his rifle out of the saddle and cocked it.

“OK, Robert, get runnin! Let’s see if you can outrun this bullet!”

I twirled around, grabbing the buckets, and began to run with every bit of strength I had. I heard the gun fire, and I screamed and threw myself on the ground between cotton plants, sending the buckets tumbling. I heard their laughter.

“Git going!” Thrasher shouted. I began to crawl frantically toward the buckets. I couldn’t lose those. When I had retrieved them, I tried crawling in the direction of the trees at the edge of the field. Thrasher fired again. I was almost insane with terror, and it was only after about six shots were fired that I realized he was shooting into the air. The cruel laughter rang across the field. I felt like a fool. I rose to my feet and ran for all I was worth, and when I was safe in the trees, I fell on the ground and lay there until I had regained enough strength to continue back.

As I lay in the shade of the trees, I remembered Miss Ceily praying for John Henry when he was sick and how the Lord had answered her prayer. I looked up into the leaves of the trees. “Lord,” I prayed, “plee—” I wanted so badly for the pain to subside. I was dizzy and nauseous and could not form words.

A few minutes later a tiny, cool breeze blew across my face. It was so refreshing and sweet that I wanted to smile. I sat up, feeling a little better. By the time I got back to the Big House, the pain was almost gone.

When Master Beal came in from the field that day, the swelling had vanished from my face, and I was suffering no pain at all.

“Take your medicine, boy,” Master called to me when he saw me bringing a load of clean towels upstairs. I stopped on the stairs and smiled broadly. “Oh, suh,” I exclaimed, “I was in sech terrible pain I thought I was dyin for sure. Then I looked up to the Lord, and I begged Him to take the pain away an heal me.”

Master Beal grunted.

I continued. “They won’t be no need for the medicine from the dentist, suh. I got the medicine straight from the Lord!”

Master Beal’s eyes narrowed, and he drew closer to the stairs.

“Come here,” he ordered. I obeyed and jumped down to where he could see my face better.

The look on him was one of complete consternation.

“Open your mouth.”

In the place where the tooth had been pulled, there was a smooth, gaping hole with no sign of swelling or infection.

“Well, I’ll be damned—”

“Oh, suh!”

“I’ll be—”

“The Lord done it, suh, sure enough! I prayed and ast Him to heal me! A breeze come over me from yonder, and He healed me!”

Master Beal stared at me for a few seconds, and then with a grunt said, “That dentist is better’n I thought.”

17

The thrill over the healing of my mouth stayed with me for many days. I whistled, sang, and hopped around the house doing my chores, pleased about everything. Most of the ugliness and the pressures escaped my notice during the harvest because I had discovered that God actually cared about colored folks. Furthermore, I knew for sure that He cared about me—me! It was hard to believe, but I knew it was true.

That autumn Miss Anna started school. I helped her get ready on her first day. I was sure this would be the end of our friendship. At school she would learn to hate me just like her brothers and sisters had learned. She hugged me and took her lunch box, which Mary Webb had packed for her.

Anna was distressed about the whole idea and wanted to stay home with me. In those early weeks of attending school, she often awoke in the morning fitfully sick. She would complain dramatically of a stomach ache or a headache or a sore throat. Once she insisted she had the pneumonia. As soon as the buggy was gone, she would miraculously recover.

“I’s hungry,” she’d tell me with a grin. Then after breakfast we would head for outdoors, and I would take her riding on her pony or we would catch frogs by the creek or pick wild flowers.

When Master Beal got wind of Anna’s missing so much school, he ordered her to go to school, sick or not. Anna cried and wailed so pathetically, Master picked her up in his arms and cooed, “Tell Daddy what would make you happy, honey.”

Between sniffs, Anna said, “I wants Robert to come to school with me!” Master was not pleased. He tossed me an angry squint of the eye.

“He kin go with you jes once, and thassall!” he snarled.

I could hardly sleep that night. I finished my chores well before daybreak the next morning and had my breakfast with Big Mac in the kitchen while it was yet dark out. I was given a chunk of corn bread for my lunch, which I wrapped up in a piece of brown paper. Big Mac didn’t realize that I thought I’d be going inside the school.

I scrubbed my face and put on my trousers and shirt and then waited for the children to wake up. Harriet was not at all happy about my going with them.

“This ain’t a good idee, boy,” she warned me in a whisper. I was too happy to listen to any warnings. God had shown me He cared about me, and now I was going to school!

We climbed into the buggy at last. I sat in the back on the end. Anna talked and giggled in front with her sisters. The ride was slow, and the early smells of the day were fresh and clean and sweet. I breathed in and watched the wisps of clouds in the bright blue sky overhead. The bumpy road was lined with dogwood, wild violets, and Joe-Pye weed. Before long we drove up to the schoolhouse.

It was a small red building, well built with even boards, and it had windows with glass and a door with hinges and a knocker. There was a hitching post for the horses.

I walked up the path with Miss Anna. She wore a blue dress and a white pinafore. She had white button-up shoes, which weren’t quite buttoned up. Her curly blond hair looked uncombed, even though it had been carefully brushed and put into place, and it blew in her face and eyes. She stayed close to me, and we neared the big door.

At last we were inside. I stood staring, my heart pounding loudly. The room was so clean, so neat, so polished. The rows of desks were clean and orderly. The walls were wood paneled with pictures of white men and a big map hanging on them. In the front of the room was a wooden platform and on it a wood desk. A white lady was sitting at the desk, and she smiled at the children as they took their seats. When her eye caught mine, the smile on her face faded.

“I’m afraid you’re in the wrong school, boy,” she said, shocked at the sight of me.

“Oh, uh—I come wi Miz Anna an Thomas an John an—”

“Anna, dear, take your seat,” the lady instructed.

Anna obeyed happily after depositing her lunch box with the others against the wall by the door.

I stood awkwardly by the door holding the corn bread wrapped in brown paper in two hands, digging my toes into the cracks of the wooden floor. The children took their seats and were quiet. The teacher rose to her feet. She was a stout woman and wore a blue dress with puffy sleeves and a black shawl over her shoulders. She peered at me over her glasses.

“Are you going to stand there all mornin, boy?” she asked.

“No, Ma’am.”

“Well, you know you can’t stay here, don’t you?” Somebody in the room started to giggle. I searched for Anna with my eyes.

“I uh—”

Somebody else began to giggle and then others joined. I couldn’t find Anna. The other Beal children stared at their desks and didn’t look up. I wanted to assure the teacher everything was okay and tried to explain how Massuh gave his permission for me to go to school. The teacher pounded the desk to quiet the children. There was an empty seat near me, and I inched toward it. The teacher sprang at me and pointed to the door. I thought she was going to hit me. I cowered against the desk and sat down.

The teacher turned her head to John and Thomas. “This boy says he come with yoll?” Nobody said anything.

“John, Thomas?” After what seemed like ages, Thomas said, “He’s ours.”

“Well then, would you please explain to him this is not a school for Coloreds?” the teacher said, glaring at him. Thomas stood and came over to me. “Didn’t you hear Miz Roland? You can’t stay here.” He gave me a shove with the palm of his hand.

I rose from the desk with my eyes on Thomas. This boy, almost the same age as me, who I lived in the same house with and knew better than his own mama, this boy I could whup easy, was acting like he never saw me before in his life. I was confused.

“You gots to go,” Thomas said, looking like he swallowed something bad. The teacher stood in the aisle, hands on her hips, waiting. Thomas put his face close to mine. “Stay outside til school be over,” he whispered.

I knew better than to argue, so I moved toward the door with my eyes on the floor. “Yessuh,” I said.

Outside in the sun I stood by the hitching post and listened to the voices of the children inside. My face burned. I walked to the edge of the school yard as the voices inside recited some words all together, “I pledge allegiance . . .”

When the children came outside to play later I hid behind the trees in the piney woods so they wouldn’t see me. I didn’t want to be laughed at or maybe pounded on. I saw Anna, and she ran all over the school yard from one end to another looking for me. I knew that’s what she was doing, looking for me. When the children went back inside, Anna was the last one on the wooden steps. She lingered there for a brief moment stretching and looking with her hand cupped over her eyes. She was worried about me, I could tell, and she wanted to know where I was. I remained unmoving in my hiding place, my heart pounding and my disappointment turning to anger.

That evening at home the boys wouldn’t look at me. Anna fell asleep until suppertime, and I swore I would learn reading and writing one day. Furthermore, I’d put in a book all that happened to me and to my people on this plantation.

I kept trying to forgive Master and Mistress Beal like Miss Ceily had told me, but bitterness had begun to take hold inside me. I obeyed and acted like a good nigger, but I wanted to get back at them. I studied on it and finally chose stealing as my weapon. At first I stole little things—small coins, trinkets. I sneaked into Master’s bedroom and stole pennies from the dresser, a wool sock on the floor, and I carried my loot down to the quarter and tried to give it away. Nobody wanted it.

“Don’t you be carryin yor devilry down here from the Big House an git us killed, chile! What we gone do with this here sock? Massah ketch us with what be his and Lord have mercy! You ain’t nothin but a fool, Robert!”

I decided I’d bury what I stole until I met two brothers, much older than I, named Mitt and Waxy Edwards. They recognized my talents and suggested a deal.

I was to bring them what I stole and they’d give me cash for it. They would, in turn, sell the stuff to a certain private source, so it would never be discovered in our possession.

It sounded like a good idea. I told nobody about it, especially not Miss Ceily, who would talk me out of it in an instant, and Big Mac, who would probably whup me for even thinking about stealing.

One day I stole a porcelain vase, the next day a silver pitcher. I stole a watch, a ring, handkerchiefs, more socks.

Money meant nothing to me. A dollar bill could have been a knee patch. I had never seen cash and had no idea what to do with it, so I tucked my earnings into the drawer of my little dresser and forgot about it.

On an early morning with a grey drizzle outside, I was upstairs cleaning the washroom when I heard a commotion coming from downstairs. Not paying any attention, I continued my cleaning. The commotion became louder. Soon I heard Mistress Beal’s shrill voice call from the hallway.

“Roberrrt, get on over here!”

I hurried out to the hall, and without warning Mistress walloped me across the face. My head spun. Then she hit me again across the ear, and I felt something pop inside my head. My ear burned with a ringing sound. Again she hit me on the head.

“You been stealin, hunh!”

“No, Ma’am—” I lied.

She ordered me into the children’s room. She opened my dresser and pointed at the little wad of money I had collected. Also, there was a paperweight in the corner of the drawer that I had gotten off Master’s desk and hadn’t sold yet.

“If that ain’t stealin, boy, what is it?”

My head ached with the ringing in my ear. I didn’t dare answer her. I could be killed for this. I remembered what they did to George Murphy and what they had planned to do to John Henry, and I started crying.

“Lord, have mercy—”

Mistress Beal was furious. Her face was bulging with red blotches, and her eyes were little fiery holes in her head. She found Thomas’s belt on the floor by his bed and picked it up. She struck me again and again on the head and shoulders with it; then she ordered me to sit on the chair by the door until she returned with Master Beal.

I was dizzy with fear and the burning pain of the belt’s lashes. My ear and head ached and the ringing noise grew worse by the minute.

I wanted to pray, but I was afraid Jesus wouldn’t hear me. I had been a bad boy, I was a thief, and now I was going to be punished. Maybe they’d hang me, or tie me to a fence post and let me starve to death. I thought of running away, but that was impossible. I’d be caught sure enough. I was helpless in my predicament and frightened out of my wits. “Lord, have mercy!” I pleaded again and again. I was sorry for stealing, truly sorry, but I knew there was nothing I could do to make up for it, and I’d have to take my punishment.

The day wore on. I was still sitting on the chair by the door when the children came home from school. Big Mac unhitched the pony and put the wagon in the barn for me. I didn’t dare move.

The talk in the kitchen was noisy. I could hear the angry voices from where I sat. There was arguing, cursing and bad words, and tempers were riled up good. Big Mac said something about uppity chillren not livin to be growed up. Mary Webb clucked like a mad hen, “He’s ruined it fuh all of us, that chile done ruined it fuh all of us. They oughter dress him up good and if’n the white mens don’t, the niggers oughter!”

The Beal children gloated over me when they heard what I had done. Virginia stood before me, hands on her hips, and sneered, “How could you steal from my daddy, Robert, when he’s been so good to yoll?”

“Yeah,” added Juanita, “Daddy took yoll in this here house when you wasn’t nothin but a pickaninny baby. He’s done tuk care of you, fed you, and put the clothes on yor back. Even carried yoll to the dentist when you was ailin. Now yoll goes and steals him blind!”

“You ain’t nothin but somethin bad, Robert. Yoll jes plain bad!”

“My daddy treat you like one of his own chillren, Robert. Yoll even sleep in the same room with his chillren. Yoll thank him by stealin from him!”

The only one who didn’t berate me was Anna. She seemed detached from everything going on and stayed in the music room by herself trying to pick melodies out on the piano.

The hours passed and I sat on the chair waiting.

The pain in my ear became so bad I felt dizzy. It was evening when I heard the sound of Master Beal’s heavy boots in the hallway. I could smell the whiskey on him from where I sat.

He stood in the doorway, and at his side was Mrs. Beal. She was scowling and waving her finger in my face. “There he is, the devilin thief! I told him to sit there and wait for you to come and punish him.”

“I oughta kill you, boy,” he growled. “I oughta kill you. You ain’t only a damn thief, yor damn dumb!”

Mistress Beal opened the drawers of my little dresser. “Look here what he’s stolen, Sam. He’s been stealin yoll blind!”

Master Beal looked in the drawer with all the money and the paperweight I had taken from his desk. He turned to me, eyes narrowed. “You steal from me, boy?”

I lowered my head and whispered, “Yessuh, I done it, suh.”

Grabbing my face in his hands, he said, “What were you figurin on doin with this money, boy?”

“I dunno, suh. I didn’t have nothin figured.”

“You got three dollar here, boy. You planning on goin somewhere on three dollar?”

“Nosuh, MassuhBeal, suh.”

He hit me hard on the cheek. “Yor lyin! Now you tell me the truth.”

I was so panicked I told him the truth. “I’d give it away, suh. Ah’d give it to the folks who is hongry, thas what I’d do!”

Master hit me again. “But you never took this money from me, boy, ’cause I ain’t never missed no three dollar! You been stealin from mah house and sellin stuff to somebody. Now who you sellin to?”

I started shaking. I trembled from head to toe. I couldn’t tell him about Mitt and Waxy! I couldn’t! I just couldn’t!

“No suh, they ain’t nobody else, suh—”

He struck me again and I tumbled off the chair. He picked me up by the collar and hit me again. “Yoll tell me the truth, boy!”

I couldn’t, I just couldn’t.

“I been missing many things, Sam,” Mistress said. “I just didn’t suspect Robert. I thought maybe it was the new girl, Rosalie, or the chauffeur, Buck—”

Master grabbed hold of my head and pulled me by the uninjured ear through the house and into the parlor. We passed Big Mac, Harriet, and Mary Webb, who were in the kitchen. Their faces were cold and indifferent, and they were still as possums. Rosalie, the new girl, was in the dining room sweeping the floor, and when she saw me pass, she nearly dropped the broom. She stood staring with her eyes wide and filled with fear. Maybe this was her first experience seeing a child beaten. The pitiful expression on Rosalie’s face suddenly made me feel older. I would hold out and not tell Master about Mitt and Waxy even if they killed me.

In the parlor, Master told Mistress to put the poking irons in the fire. “Mebbe I ought to burn that lyin tongue outa yer, boy!” he said. Then he brought out the cat-o’-nine-tails. The whip cut the skin, and the lead balls tore it up. He ordered me to stand against the wall. Then he called, “Rosalie! Rosalie!”

After a minute or so, Rosalie came slowly into the room. “You damn slow, girl!” Master cursed. “Cain’t you move no faster!”

“Yessuh, Massuh Beal, suh.”

“Go git Big Mac an’ bring him in here! An git a move on!”

“Yessuh, Massuh Beal, suh.”

I was so filled with fear, I was frozen in place. What did he want with Big Mac? Would he do the whupping?

Big Mac entered the room. His face was hard, his back straight. He stared from the tops of his eyes at Master Beal. Master Beal wiped spittle off his mouth with the back of his hand and rasped, “This here nigger stole from me, Mac.”

“Yessuh, I know, suh.” The scar on his face shone black in the yellow light.

“You does, hunh? You teach him how to steal?”

“Nosuh.”

“Well, mebbe you know who he’s sellin the stuff to?”

“Only Robert knows that, suh, if’n it’s true, suh.”

“Oh, it be true, Mac. This here boy been stealin from me and sellin it somewhere. Mebbe you can help me find out who he be sellin to.”

“Suh—”

“Take yer shirt off!”

Big Mac shot me a look, then slowly drew the grey shirt from his body. Master moved to the fireplace where the poking irons were red hot. He held one in his hand.

“Turn around, Mac!” He laid the end of the poking iron onto Big Mac’s back. I screamed in horror.

Master whirled around to me and said, “Robert, you ready to tell me who you sold my stuff to, or am I gone haftuh fry Mac here til he ain’t nothin but a pile of blood and ashes!”

“No! No!” I screamed. “Please!” Master pressed the poking iron onto Big Mac’s flesh again. Big Mac moaned in agony. I screamed, “Stop! I’ll tell! I’ll tell!”

Master held the poking iron poised at Big Mac’s neck. “Please, suh!” I screamed. “Please, Massuh, suh, I’ll tell!”

“I’m listenin, boy, I’m listenin!”

“It be Waxy and Mitt Edwards!”

Master stood still for a moment, then walked slowly to the hearth and replaced the poking iron. Big Mac was bent over and shaking, his face in his hands.

“Mac,” Master said in a low voice, “next time I give you a chile to learn, you better learn him better ’n you done on this one! Now git!” Big Mac, still bent, his hands on his thighs to keep from falling, his face twisted, started out of the room. Master stood staring at me. “Waxy and Mitt . . . Waxy and Mitt Edwards . . . Wal, Robert, yoll gonna take me to the quarter and point them out.”

I stared at him in unbelief. Why, that was unthinkable! That would be Uncle Tomming in the worst sense! My life would be worthless. “And if you don’t show me, boy, I’ll lay that iron on Big Mac til you do. You hearin me?”

Master Beal sent for two of his white drivers to come with him and dragged me down to the quarter. When we reached the edge, some of the children I played with ran around behind shanties to hide. Everybody was terrified when they saw Master come to the quarter. They knew it meant devilment when he showed up. He had me lead the way to show what a traitor I was. We walked along the path right in front of all the shanties so everyone in the quarter could see me walking with Master Beal and the drivers. The shame and the dread was almost more than I could bear. I longed to die right there. If only Master would kill me!

Finally, we came to the Edwardses’ shanty. Master nodded and I went inside. The family was seated on the floor eating. The cabin smelled of poke salad cooking over the open fire.

Tears streamed down my face. “Miz Edwards,” I blurted, “Miz Edwards, the massuh done foun out that we been stealin—”

“Who been stealin?” she asked, surprised.

“I been stealin from the massuh, an’—”

Waxy and Mitt stiffened.

“An—an—”

“Wal, what is it, boy?” asked their father. I was shaking violently. “Waxy an’ Mitt done take the stuff from me and sell it—Massuh, he outside—”

Mrs. Edwards rushed to the door. Mr. Edwards turned to his sons. “Is this true? Have you been sellin stuff from the Big House for this boy?”

Waxy and Mitt lowered their heads. “Yessuh,” they confessed.

Mr. Edwards accompanied his sons out of the cabin to face Master Beal. It was a dreadful scene.

“Well, Robert?” asked Master Beal.

“Uh, uh—this here be Waxy and Mitt,” I answered.

“Wal, what about them?” asked the master. “I already know their names.”

“Wal, they be the ones who was sellin stuff from the Big House—”

“Are you tellin me that these here boys been sellin mah stuff from mah house, Robert?”

I looked down at my feet. “Yessuh, Massuh Beal, suh, they be.”

A picture of Little William, his throat slit and the crows gnawing on him, sailed across my mind.

Master Beal hoisted himself up tall and said loudly, “Wal, good boy, Robert. You done real good to inform me about these two thievin boys. You’re gonna get a nice little reward for this, Robert.”

I was done for. I felt every eye in the quarter on me. “You boys gonna pay for this real good,” Master shouted. “Tie them up, boys!” he ordered the two men with him.

Mrs. Edwards began to cry. “Oh, have mercy, Massuh Beal,” she cried. “They good boys! They good workers! They never done nothin bad before!”

“Auntie, they ain’t never gonna do nothin bad no more!” spit Master.

Taking me by the shoulder, Master Beal strutted back along the same path. We led the way, and the two prisoners followed behind between the two field drivers. I was sick, horrified. “This here will be jes far nuff!” Master shouted. We had stopped right by a large chestnut tree with low hanging branches. People peered from the doorways.

“Oh, God, no—”

Waxy and Mitt didn’t make a sound. Mrs. Edwards had been following behind, along with Mr. Edwards and the rest of their children. She was crying loudly and pleading with Master Beal. “They good boys, they good boys!”

Slowly the slaves encircled us, surrounding us like a long wall of grief.

“Yes, Robert, you did right good by bringin me down here and showin me these two thieves! That’s what I call a good nigger!”

I shrank from him, but he grabbed me by the arm. “Now you can tie the rope around their black necks!”

A high-pitched wail pierced the air, and Mrs. Edwards threw herself on the dirt. She kicked her feet and screamed until dust flew up all around her. Master was taken aback by her demonstration.

“Mind yo self, Auntie!” he snarled after he watched for a few seconds. “When a nigger steals from his boss man he gots to be punished!”

“Take me instead!” cried Mr. Edwards. “Take me! I’m old and my days of usefulness to you are numbered. These boys is young, and the strength is still in them!”

Soon the air was filled with weeping and wailing. Mrs. Edwards threw herself at Master Beal, sobbing loudly. Others were moaning, praying, and pleading.

Master turned angrily to the two boys. “Strip off their clothes!” he ordered. Then he made them squat down naked, and he whupped them with the cat-o’-nine-tails. Then he had them lie down flat and he whupped the bottoms of their feet.

When it was finished, Master wiped his mouth and turned to the people. “Any of yoll evah steal from me, there’ll be some dead niggers around here.” Then he turned to Mrs. Edwards. “OK, Auntie? They yors to learn them some sense.”

He gave me a shove, and we left the quarter. Back at the Big House, Big Mac was stretched out on a bench in the kitchen with leaf poultices laid on his back and shoulders. Master stood looking at him. “Huh! I hates to whup a good man, you know that, Mac.” Big Mac didn’t move or turn his head to acknowledge his boss.

Master sighed and called for Mary Webb. “Give Mac some of yer whiskey, hear?” He sat down on the bench next to Mac. “Hurry up with that whiskey!” Mary, full of shock and fear, didn’t know what she should do. She’d been stealing Massuh’s whiskey for years. She brought Mac a tin cup with Massuh’s whiskey.

“Give it here,” Master Beal ordered. He took the cup and pulled a swallow. Giving a shudder, he squinted up at her. “Whey you git this?” Mary Webb looked like she might just faint on the floor right there.

“It be moonshine, suh,” she lied.

“Wal, ain’t you the sneaky cat. Show me the jug.” It looked like this might be the worst night ever when he found out Mary Webb had been stealing his whiskey. She inched her way to the pantry and I held my breath. I could feel Big Mac suck in his breath as he lay miserable on the bench covered in leaves. Mary came back with a cracked old brown jug. She was too smart not to pour his whiskey in her own jug. Master Beal tipped the jug to his mouth and took a pull.

He wiped his mouth, looked up at her, and was quiet. I figured this was it. Mary was done for.

“Damn ef you ain’t drinkin better whiskey’n I got! Whey yoll get this here moonshine?”

Mary Webb’s mouth moved, but no sound came out. “Git me some o this here moonshine, Mary,” he belched. “I don’t keer who be makin it, git me some.”

“Yessuh,” Mary Webb mumbled, but being the clever woman she was, added, “But Massuh, yoll know it cost.”

“How much?”

“One dollar, suh.”

So Mary Webb began her business of selling Master Beal his own whiskey.

He handed Mac the cup. Then, looking at me, he said in a disgusted voice, “Yoll got a new home now, boy. You be movin to the quarter. Mac, carry this thievin boy outa this here house and set him to work in the fields tomorrow. You hear me? I don’t want to see his thievin face no more round this house!”

How long I had wanted to hear these words, and now they were my death warrant.

“Give him to Thrasher and set him to work with a mule and a plow.”

I didn’t sleep that night, and when I arose before dawn, the bed was wet with tears. I wanted to take a last look at Anna, maybe feel her little arms around my neck once more and kiss her round, smooth cheeks again, but when I saw the iron-jawed face of Big Mac in the doorway, I didn’t dare do anything but follow him.

There was a slab of cold fried corn pone and a hot cup of sassafras tea waiting for me on the kitchen table. I ate and drank in a daze. Then Big Mac handed me a small brown sack. “This is to eat at noon.”

“Thank you, suh,” I said softly, longing for a smile from him, some sign of forgiveness. There was none.

He walked slowly and deliberately. I followed him, crying miserably. “Mac—” I whispered. He stiffened and refused to answer. “Big Mac—I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” There was no answer.

“Kin I fetch the wood before we go? Kin I—”

It was no use. Big Mac wouldn’t answer.

His agony was intense. He had watched over me since I was five years old. He had cared for me and I betrayed him.

We reached the quarter, and I could see dark forms emerging from doors to line up for the fields. Big Mac brought me to a shanty in the center of the quarter. We went inside. There was a man and a woman there.

“Massuh done sent this here boy to live. He be put to work today plowin with a mule,” Mac told them. The man and the woman stared at me. Their expressions were chilly and unfriendly.

Then, without so much as a glance at me, Big Mac turned and left the shanty. I ran after him. “Mac!” I sobbed. “Big Mac!” He wouldn’t turn. “Please, Big Mac, don’t leave me!” I held onto his shirt sleeve. I saw the caked blood on his neck and back that had soaked through his shirt. “Please, please—” I sobbed. Big Mac would not look at me, and I saw in the dim light of early morning that his scarred face was covered with tears.

18

The lines of workers were already streaming toward the tool sheds and fields. I had no idea of where to go, and so I followed behind a young man heading toward a tool shed. I walked along in the darkness feeling cold and sick. My ear still ached from the blow Mistress Beal gave me. Master had put me out of the house and sent me to the quarter. He must have known they’d kill me just like they done Little William.

I pictured Big Mac’s face in my mind. There was no person so dear to me, but he, too, must’ve known I was a dead boy.

We stood in a line at the shed, and I saw the forms of the overseers up ahead. There was no mistaking the hulking form of Thrasher atop his clumsy horse he called Trigger. The boy ahead of me brought a steel walking plow out of the shed. Thrasher spied me as he clopped near us on his horse.

“I knowed yoll’d be here this morning, Robert,” he gloated. “Yoll git yonder with a plow. Tomorry yoll git yer mule ready to go by the horn! Jed! Git him ready!”

The boy named Jed showed me how to hitch the mule to the plow and tie the reins over my shoulders. He helped me get a firm grip on the handles of the plow and showed me ridges between water furrows, where I was supposed to run the blade of the plow. I was completely dumbfounded by everything. To make matters worse, there were women behind me with bags slung around their necks filled with cotton seed. They were to drop the seeds into the place where I had plowed. And to make it even worse than that, there were more workers behind these women with heavy wood furrows for covering up the seed. All this to plant a row of cotton.

Naturally, if I did a poor job, the whole line of us got the lash. This would make the other workers so furious, they’d be fit to kill the one who was at fault. This was the way the overseers made sure the slaves worked their hardest.

I blindly began to manipulate the plow, my head swimming. I made an awful mess. The mule knew I didn’t know what I was doing, and I couldn’t get him to obey. It’s a wonder I didn’t get killed that first morning. The lash came down again and again. Some of the women were nursing mothers, some of them grandmothers. It was so cruel to make them pay the penalty for my blundering.

By noon the sun was high overhead, and it baked our bodies as we labored. I had no covering for my head, and the constant beating of the sun’s rays made me nauseous. Then came a lovely sound—the horn that announced noon eating time. The workers left their places and moved slowly to shady spots at the edge of the field for their meal.

I began to follow them, but found I couldn’t walk. Then I saw a grey wall coming toward me. I fell broadside into its cushion-like softness, and all was black and very quiet. When I awoke, I was lying beneath a tree at the edge of the field. Someone sat near me. I opened my eyes and saw Corrie Moore.

“Oh Corrie, Ma’am,” I moaned.

“Robert, you is with the fever for sure.”

“Where the mule and the plow be?”

“I drug yoll here, Robert, and Thrasher done put another man on that plow.”

“Ohhh, Lord.”

“Buck ’n me heard what a fix yoll is in, and we thinks mebbe we kin work it so’s yoll live with us till the air clears. ’Sides, you bein with the fever ain’t no good nohow.”

“Corrie!” I gasped. “It don’t make no difference. I is a dead boy. Jes leave me be an let it happen.”

“Wal, we’ll jes see about that, Robert. We’ll jes see. Now come on wi’ me. I done got permission from Thrasher to git you offen the field.”

I tried to get to my feet but I couldn’t. The grey wall came at me again, and once more I entered its very black and quiet interior.

Corrie managed to drag me to her cabin while I was unconscious. Often I have marveled at her strength. She was a little woman, and yet she had the strength of a man. I woke long enough to drink a swallow of warm water.

Corrie had lifted me onto their bed. I lay there, unaware of where I was, when through the darkness I saw a face. I heard laughter. The face came closer to me. Bathed in sunlight, smooth and lovely, it was Pearl. She smiled and reached out to me. I ran to her. But I couldn’t reach her. The harder I ran, the farther away she was. “Pearl! Pearl!” She looked wonderfully happy and radiant. Farther and farther away she moved and then she was gone.

I stood alone calling her when suddenly I heard a voice beside me. I recognized it but couldn’t immediately identify it. It was as beautiful and sweet as the smell of honeysuckle. “Honey,” the voice called. I turned. The sight was so glorious I cried out in joy. “Mama!” I ran to her, but she put up a hand to stop me. “Honey,” she repeated, “everything is going to be all right.” Her words were no sooner spoken than I felt a cool balm cover my body. “Everything is going to be all right.”

Then she vanished, but not before I saw the small figure beside her—Ella, my Ella! And she was gone.

Later, when I opened my eyes and looked around the darkened shanty, the memory of the dream was fresh in my mind. The bed against the rough wall, the crunch of the shucks in the mattress, the wash bucket on the table and a low fire in the hearth—all was in sharp contrast to the peace and bright beauty I had just seen. “Mama,” I said in the darkness.

Crawling from the bed, I groped along the wall to the wooden table in the center of the room. Then slowly, across the wet dirt floor, I moved to the hearth and lifted the tea kettle from the wire hanger which hung across the dying coals. I set the kettle down on the table and stood trying to catch my breath. Then I filled a tin cup with the hot water, drank a swallow, and returned to the bed.

There was a piece of fatback hanging from a hook by the hearth and a bag of cornmeal in the corner. Since there was no garden near the house, I knew this was their only food. I was hungry, and I saw near me the brown paper wrapper Big Mac had wrapped my lunch in. Opening it I found corn bread and a—could it be? Maybe my sickness was making me peculiar in the head. Right beside the corn bread was a baked chicken leg! I ate it slowly, enjoying every bite. The thought that Mac had done such a wonderful thing for me made me feel better. I fell asleep then and didn’t wake until much later when Buck came home.

The fever had not subsided, and the pain was terrible in my ear and head. Buck poured some salt in the water from the kettle. He mixed it up and then poured some of it into my ear. Then he took some ashes from the hearth, wrapped them in a palmetto leaf and, dampening it with hot water, told me to lie with my head on it.

I knew something had burst or broken in my ear when Mrs. Beal hit me, and Buck’s remedies didn’t help.

Buck and Corrie’s weekly allowance of cornmeal and fatback barely fed them and their little boy. Now there was me to feed, too. They never complained about me being there, though, and they shared what they had without a second thought.

I prayed daily for the Lord to kill me. He had already healed me miraculously once with the abscessed tooth, and now I begged Him to kill me or heal me of the terrible pain in my ear.

In about a week’s time, the pain began to subside. To my dismay, however, I discovered I couldn’t hear out of the injured ear. I never did regain the hearing in that ear. Now I found myself with two disabilities—slurred speech and one deaf ear.

Buck decided to try some more cures. Once he poked some axle grease inside my ear, and another time he squashed an enormous bug on the table and squeezed its blood and insides into my ear. Every night I slept with my head on the ashes wrapped in the palmetto leaf. Once we even put a few drops of urine into my ear thinking it might open it up. Of course nothing worked. I was feeling stronger, though, and it was time for me to get to the field, with or without two ears.

The first summer as a field slave was the longest summer of my life. Each day was grueling misery. I could not get the knack of handling the mule and plow.

One day after work, I was putting the mule back in the barn, and I remembered that when the hot weather came, I was always a year older. I knew I had been eleven, but I didn’t know what came after it. “Mule,” I asked the mule, “is you eleven or eight? I been a studyin and I believe I am twenty years of age, now.”

Corrie informed me, however, that my birthday was June 27 and that I was now twelve years old. “It was Pearl’s wish that yoll know when you was born, and that yoll know yor age. You is now twelve years old, chile.”

While hoeing cotton, I was able to think about being twelve years old. I felt the whip swinging above my back often because I’d plow right into the cotton plants, which were now about a foot high. It didn’t help much to be twelve—I still was no good in the field—good only for the lash.

Every night I fell asleep weary and aching. I slept on the floor of the shanty, wrapped in a tattered, lice-infested blanket. Buck made a wall of cardboard out of several smaller pieces and stuck them together as a partition so he and Corrie and their little boy could have some privacy. I had my own private room for the first time in my life. It was only a corner without windows and only one blanket on the floor, but it was mine.

Saturday night was payday. We didn’t get paid but it was still called payday. I kept my head down though I tried to get a glimpse of Big Mac. I couldn’t find him. I saw Miss Ceily’s son, Isaiah, out of the corner of my eye. I wanted to ask him about Miss Ceily, but I didn’t dare draw any attention to myself. Isaiah worked a different field than I, and I never saw him. When I had received my provisions and was heading back to the shanty, he took hold of my arm.

“Robert,” he said flatly. “You enjoyin bein a field slave?”

“Shure. It’s fine. Jes fine.”

“Yeah. It’s fine, jes fine all right.”

That’s all he said to me. He turned his face away.

“Isaiah,” I urged quietly, “please tell yor mama, tell Miz Ceily that Master woulda killed Big Mac if’n I hadn’t brought him to Mitt and Waxy—”

With a quick jerk, Isaiah turned away from me.

I knew it was useless to try to defend myself. What I had done was my fault and my fault alone. There was a price to pay for making mistakes, and I had to pay mine.

The days were endlessly long and the nights far too short. Sometimes we wouldn’t be finished working until way past dark. Then we’d drag our bodies from rest at 4:00 a.m. to begin all over again. There was constant muttering and grumbling. Hatred, bitterness, and suffering were all we knew. The parties in the quarter, with energetic dancing and noisemaking, gave little relief.

Master Beal supplied whiskey to his slaves, but in drunkenness there was no relief. There was nothing to help forget the anguish and torture we were bound to. Sometimes the hopelessness became too much to bear, and the mind of the tormented slave would crack. Violence and suicide were often the result.

The church meetings where we sang our stories to the Lord were our only solace and hope. Hearing words from the Bible strengthened us and we tried to find peace in the fact that this earthly life is short. Our suffering would end forever on that Great Day in the Morning, and for a half hour we’d sing verse after verse of the song:

In that great gettin up mornin,

Fare you well! Fare you well!

In that great gettin up morning,

Fare you well! Fare you well!

There’s a better day a-comin

Fare you well! Fare you well!

When my Lord speaks to His Faduh

Fare you well! Fare you well!

Says Faduh I’m tired o’ bearin

Fare you well! Fare you well!

Tired o bearin fo poor sinners

Fare you well! Fare you well!

Gabriel would blow his horn, judgment would fall, and we’d sing farewell to our troubles forever.

Swing that chariot, Lord

and let me ride.

Swing that chariot, Lord

and let me ride.

Ohhh, rock me, Lord.

Rock me, Lord,

calm and easy.

I’ve got a home.

(I’ve got a home)

I’ve got a home.

(I’ve got a home)

I’ve got a home

on the other side.

I heard how things used to be worse for the Negro, how the slaves wore chains and had to have church in the dark of night in the woods on account of the white man didn’t believe we had souls. I couldn’t understand how the older slaves had lasted through the years.

“Robert, you be twelve years old now, and you almost a man. Yoll not a chile no more,” Miss Ceily told me, walking back to the quarter from church. She recognized that my heart was turning more detached and bitter. “You needs to make some room in yor heart for Jesus.”

“Yes, Ma’am.”

“The Lord don’t need no twelve-year-old thinkin like no sorry babychile.”

“No, Ma’am.”

I’d be thinking how all this good land to grow crops was more than enough for all. Yet the black folk on this place had to plow with their bones and grit and blood; they hoed, chopped, picked with empty bellies all to make the white man fat. Then the harvest come and they carried the cotton and the corn, the soybean and the tobacco, and their own dead babies. Dead babies, dead mamas, dead brothers and sisters—men broken like kindling til they couldn’t move to pick no more cotton. O Lord, O Lord, they’s got to be a just God.

I couldn’t forget the kindness of Big Mac and the blood and sweat he gave to Sam Beal for so many years. I could still see Master Beal’s determined face as he laid the red hot poking iron on Mac’s back like he was merely carving his name on a tree.

Toward the end of the summer the cotton fields were like broad white carpets, and I had to learn how to pick cotton. I was as bad at cotton picking as I was at plowing. With my long sack strapped around my neck, and holding the mouth of the sack chest high, I would drag it along the ground beside the rows of the five-foot high cotton plants, pulling cotton from the bolls. At the beginning of each row there were baskets; we emptied our sacks into these baskets. At the end of the day, the baskets were weighed.

Jed tried to teach me how to pick. “Don’t put yor fingers all the way into the burr, just put them in about halfway. Then pull the lock out.” He showed me how to stoop down, too. “Yoll bend this way so you don’t git tired. Sometimes you carry two rows.” Then he told me with a laugh, “Some o’ these old-timers can pick 200 pounds before noon!”

The cotton pickers moved down the rows of cotton, pulling the blossomed cotton from the bolls. The unopened bolls were left for another picking. My hands were clumsy, and I broke branches as I handled the plants. This was a serious offense and warranted a snap of the whip because cotton will not bloom on broken branches. I just couldn’t seem to get the knack, and I envied those who did it so well. Their fingers moved with skill and precision, whereas mine were troublesome and awkward.

Weighing-in time was at the end of the day. In my sack they would always find dry leaves or a piece of boll, and the penalty would be no food or a lash. I didn’t pick enough cotton to satisfy the overseers, either. The other slaves picked 200 to 400 pounds a day. I could never reach that quota. Not once.

On Sundays we didn’t go to the fields. I stayed near Buck and Corrie’s shanty, not wanting to go near the quarter. Most of the time I went to the church service with Miss Ceily. There had been no attempts on my life yet, but I thought every morning might be my last.

One Sunday afternoon I was alone in the shanty and was startled by a shout at the door.

“Robert Sadler!” a woman’s voice called. I sat absolutely still, not knowing what to do. “Robert Sadler? Are you in there?” the voice called again. Finally, I decided to answer and moved quietly to the door. There was a young black woman standing beside the shack peering inside. She wore a cotton dress wet with sweat, her hair pulled up beneath a straw hat, and she held a paper bag at her side.

When she saw me, her eyes grew wide and she cried, “Robert! Robert, is that you, chile?”

I stared at the stranger wondering what she wanted with me. “Robert,” she whispered, in a warm but frightened voice, “come on out here and let me see yoll.” I didn’t answer her, and I didn’t move. I just stood staring at her.

The woman put her bag down and held her arms out to me. “Robert, honey—I’m your sister Margie.”

Margie.

I gasped. Margie. Something inside my head blew into a million pieces. I saw a horse-drawn buggy and a terrified fourteen-year-old girl sitting in the back. I heard the long-ago-lost voice of Pearl, “No, Lord, don’t take Margie! No! Please, Lord, bring Margie back!” Margie!

“Robert . . . honey . . .”

I moved out the door, my heart beating wildly. I stumbled toward her, and as the burst of sunlight hit me, I fell into her arms.

Vaguely I heard the Beals’ chickens clucking and crowing in the yard, and I could hear the dogs barking, yet there was nothing around us, nothing and nobody. It was not happiness that I felt, and it was surely not hope—merely a numbness. The dead had come back to life.

Margie held me tightly. “I swore I’d find you again some day, Robert, honey—I swore—”

“Pearl—Pearl’s daid,” I sobbed.

“I know, honey. I done found that out when I come here the first time.”

“Come here the first time?”

“Chile, I been here at this ole farm three times lookin for yoll!”

I straightened.

“First time a white chile ran me off. I come around the back and come to the door, and a lil white girl come and say, ‘Whatchou wantchere?’ I told her I was lookin for my brother, Robert Sadler, and my sister, Pearl Sadler, who was bought by Sam Beal six years ago.

“That lil old chile lift up her lip at me like she was fixin to take the hickory to me herself. ‘Pearl’s daid!’ she hollered at me, and then she told me to git or she’d call her daddy on me. So I couldn’t do nothin but leave. It done broke mah heart, and I never found out where you was that time.”

I closed my eyes. That little chile must have been Anna . . .

“So I come back agin,” Margie continued. “It’s a walk that takes the whole day nearly. Figger 10 or 12 miles. Then I was runned off the place two more times. Oh, I know that I ain’t allowed here, but I had to come somehow.”

She smiled at me. “Ah brought yoll some things.” For a crazy second, looking at her in the sunlight, I saw Mama again.

“Here’s some trousers I done sewed for ye, not knowin yer size or nothin—and a shirt. . . . You sure done growed!” Then she pulled out some vanilla wafers, cold pork chops, and a cluster of grapes. There was also a jar of Vaseline.

I stuck a vanilla wafer in my mouth, and she lowered her eyes. “Yoll ain’t eatin but a handful a day, are ye?” I didn’t answer her.

Then she told me of her escape from the family in Hartwell, Georgie, who had bought her from Tom Billings.

“One day Janey come and carried me offa that place.”

“Janey?”

“Yes, honey, our sister, Janey.”

I could remember no sister by that name.

“Well, chile, she be third from the oldest, and she found out where I was and she come lookin for me in a big ole car! She tuk me to Anderson to live with her.”

I listened as though I were hearing a story that the white children might make up before they went to sleep at night.

“Janey tole me,” she continued, “that the only way I could stay free would be if’n I got married. Tole me if’n I was married, the white folk couldn’t come and carry me back to Hartwell. So they done fixed up a weddin, and I got married to a gittar player they found who was willin to go through with it for five dollar.

“Been trouble ever since.” Margie sighed, then took a breath and said, a little brighter, “I gotta be movin along, chile. I’ll be back agin.” She kissed me on the cheek, held me tightly for a moment. “They beatin on you, honey?”

“Naw, they ain’t beatin on me.”

When Margie had gone and I was alone again, I thought maybe I had dreamed the whole thing. But a paper bag filled with wonderful things was proof that I had not dreamed it all. A stranger named Margie had been here.

19

I was sure glad when the cotton picking season was over. I was given chores such as chopping wood, cleaning the barns, feeding the hogs and mules, and painting and fixing. I did all that I was told to do with very little concern or care. I spoke little, and even when I was with Buck and Corrie and their little boy, Adger, I had nothing to say.

Margie came to visit me once more, this time bringing Janey. They brought fresh peaches, walnuts, flour, cornmeal, a ham bone, and canned mackerel. In another bag were shirts and pants and sweaters and even shoes. We had enough to give away. We sat by the hearth in Buck and Corrie’s shanty cracking and eating walnuts, and talking.

Janey was a large-boned, striking girl with high cheekbones and flashing eyes. Her broad smile was bright and showed beautiful, white, even teeth. She was obviously someone who wouldn’t be held down. I eyed her with interest.

Janey didn’t say much to me, but she seemed to be genuinely concerned about me. She told us about a brother of ours named Johnny, who lived in Anderson.

I could not remember a brother named Johnny. Then she told me that I had another brother named Leroy who lived near the Beal farm. She told me Leroy owned his own little farm. It was shocking for me to be hearing things like this, and I couldn’t relate in any way to the news. Strangers who called themselves my sisters telling me of a free world outside and about brothers of mine owning farms—it was just too much for my one good black ear to bear.

“I won’t be back for a while,” Margie told me. “I’s gone have a baby.” The words meant nothing to me. People having babies all the time.

When they left, Janey said to Corrie, “Kin yoll teach him about washin and sech? He stinks terrible. ’Sides that, he’s got bugs so bad they’s crawling all over his face!”

Corrie worked from sunup until late at night, but she squeezed in time for me as well as for her child and husband. I had forgotten all that Miss Harriet and Mac had taught me about keeping clean. Corrie showed me how to wash myself like Janey had asked. She showed me how to wash my teeth with a stick and reminded me to wash my clothes.

Soon the winter would descend upon us. Even though the South Carolina winters were mostly mild, the temperature sometimes got below freezing, and there was an occasional snowfall. The cold weather didn’t last long, but without heat, shoes, or warm clothing, it was agony. I refused the clothes Janey and Margie brought because I didn’t want to have what others didn’t have. Buck and Corrie took what they needed and I gave the rest away.

With the harvesting finished, the pressure was not quite so heavy on us, and I felt myself begin to loosen up a little. I began to notice things again, like sunshine and trees. I noticed faces and stars at night, and I noticed animals. One day when I was through working in the barn, I took a walk down to the creek that ran through Sam Beal’s land. I stood on the bank watching the water for a minute or so, and then got down on my knees and stuck my head in the water. I scrubbed at my scalp and then dried off with my shirt. When I stood up, it occurred to me that I wasn’t alone. I turned around and saw a young man standing not six feet from me.

“Hi,” he said with a friendly voice.

“Hello, Thomas,” I answered coldly.

“Whatcha doin down here, Robert?”

I smiled sarcastically. “I’m taking a bath, suh, watch yoll doin here?”

“I’m takin a walk, thassall,” he snapped. “’Sides, it ain’t none of yor bi’ness.”

I shrugged and climbed back up the bank to begin the walk back to the barn. Thomas Beal ran after me.

“Robert!” he called. I stopped. “Robert, yoll doin OK?”

“Jes fine, Thomas,” I answered without looking at him. A July sun flashed across my mind, and his chubby face covered with mud; we were children and playing in the rhododendron in the yard.

“Well, it’s jes that I know it must be hard for yoll bein in the field when you been in the house all them years.”

I didn’t answer him.

“Listen here, Robert—”

I took a loud breath indicating my disinterest. “Robert, I just wanted to say—that is, listen, I gotta tell ye somethin—”

“Thomas, if you got somethin to say, say it.”

“It’s about, well, about—about that stealin’ business.”

I turned away. “I don’t care to talk about thet there subjec’, Thomas. ’Scuse me, I gotta go back to mah work.”

“Wait, Robert. I think you oughter know something! You remember Mitt and Waxy? The boys you was givin the stuff to and they was sellin it?”

“Uh-huh, I remember.”

“Well, they was sellin the stuff to—”

“To another plantation, Thomas. They had a way. I knows all about it.”

“Robert, they wasn’t sellin it to nobody on no other plantation.”

“Hunh?” I looked at him, wondering what he was getting at.

“Robert, they was sellin that stuff to—Thrasher.”

My mouth opened in spite of myself.

“I swear I’m tellin you the truth.”

“Thomas, you is plumb crazy—” I rolled my eyes and began to laugh.

“Daddy went down to the quarter when he got drunk one night and went to the Edwardses’ place, and he told Mitt and Waxy they could leave the plantation.”

I didn’t believe him. “You crazy, Thomas. They is good workers. Master Beal need strong mens. They ain’t enough strong mens on this farm!”

Thomas looked at me sadly. “There ain’t enough of nothin on this farm, Robert, and that’s the God hepp me truth.”

That night I told Buck and Corrie what had happened. “Ah declare,” Corrie said, wagging her head. “I been hearing that Massuh’s drinkin is causin him to ruination . . . mebbe it’s true.”

“Why would he turn out Mitt and Waxy?”

I had to find out for myself, and I cared so little for my life that I went down to the Edwardses’ place that night. I called inside. When Mr. Edwards came to the door, he looked surprised.

“Whatcha want here, boy?” he asked.

“I come to find out if it’s true that Massuh done turn out Mitt and Waxy for they freedom.”

“They is free, all right. But they is still workin the land share-croppin.”

Mrs. Edwards called from inside. “Come on in, Robert.”

Mrs. Edwards gave me a smile. “Robert, I’m so glad you come by. I been wantin yoll to know that we don’t hold no hard feelin’s for yoll. Come on and set yerself down here.”

Mrs. Edwards told me, “Son, bein a slave they want you low and mean and like a animal. But we ain’t no animals. We is people, an we gotta remember thet. Don’t let them make you a dog when you is a human bean.”

I nodded. A human bean.

“Yoll prayin, son?”

“I reckon not, Ma’am.”

“Yoll better not forgit Him, hear? He’s the answer to all this. He’s the only answer. If you don’t got the Lord, you gets a festerin and all tore up on the inside. Nossuh! Let’um tear us up on the outside, not the inside. Son, don’t you evah forgit the Lord!”

“Mitt and Waxy’s place ain’t no better than this one, but they call it theirs,” said Mr. Edwards.

“Do Massuh pay em?”

“He done give em tools an seed, a few chickens an a hog. They keeps half the crop and the other half goes to Massuh.”

“Lord!”

Mitt and Waxy farmed like they always had, but now instead of being called slaves, they were called sharecroppers. At least they were out from under Thrasher’s whip.

Then came the day Master Beal come looking for me. He found me standing by the door of Buck and Corrie’s shanty.

“Robert!” he shouted. “Come here, boy.”

Sweet Jesus, I comin home.

“You deaf, boy? Come ’ere!”

I hurried to his side. Might as well die quick. “Yessuh, Massuh Beal, suh.”

“Go get me some gin at the store yonder.”

“Hunh?” I was shocked. He might as well have told me to take a little jaunt to Jupiter. I couldn’t have heard right. Buck wasn’t around. Nobody was around to tell me if I heard right.

“You ain’t still dumb, are you, boy? Run up to Jube’s and get me some gin. You’s the only nigger around. Take the horse and git.”

Take the horse! What was he saying? Then I looked at the horse he was pointing at. It was Trigger, Thrasher’s horse!

Okay. They’re wanting to kill a nigger today. I’m the one. I’m gonna git killed.

“Suh, Massuh Beal, suh, yoll mean I should git on Trigger, suh?” I was so confounded I almost called Trigger “suh,” too.

“Get on that horse, Robert, and get up yonder now! Don’t you know Thrasher’s daid?”

Hunh? I stared at Master Beal like I was seeing double. He rubbed his chin with his fist. “Tha’s right, the Thrasher be daid. He got hisself stabbed in the gut while he was sleepin. Now, get me thet gin.”

Thrasher dead! As easily said as “Today is a nice day” or “Tomorrow it might rain.” Thrasher was dead.

The narrow dirt road was lined with trees, and you could see the ironwood, fire pink, and asters growing wild along the sides of the road and in the clearings.

Never in my craziest dreams had I imagined I’d be sitting on Trigger—Thrasher’s horse! And here I was, going for gin at Jube’s Market for Master Beal. If that didn’t beat all.

The horse was as demonized as his owner was, and I was glad that I got back without breaking any bones. A few days later someone poisoned that horse.

The slaves were still scared of Thrasher after he was long dead. They thought his ghost might come back and torture them. Some said they could hear Trigger going up and down the quarter at night looking to do devilment. There was talk like that.

20

Another year went by, and I labored and prayed and grew stronger, but never better at being a field slave. I couldn’t plow, hoe, cut stalk, or pick cotton right. It was misery twenty-four hours a day. My only relief was in the winter months when I was put to other chores before plowing time would begin again. I missed Big Mac. There was hardly a day went by when I didn’t think of him.

The summer of 1925 I turned fourteen years old. I had grown large. Though I wasn’t tall, I had broad shoulders and thick arms. The other boys didn’t want to fight me because I could beat them. Jed, who still worked the same fields as I did, often teased me because I was so clumsy with the plow. “One of these days thet mule gonna plow you, Robert.”

Jed told me his real name was Zephaniah. The white master had it changed to Jed. “They find Zephaniah too hard to say. So they shorten it up an’ call me Jed.” A Jeremiah was called Jerry, a Josiah would be Joe, and a Delilah Lee was changed to Lucie. I thought of Tennessee, who refused to allow her name to be changed and wouldn’t answer to Carolina. I smiled and said a quiet prayer for her right there in the field, for her and for John Henry and the baby.

It was on a Saturday night in the middle of the summer that Buck cleared his throat and told me, “Boy, we’s leavin this here farm.” When it had sunk in, I jumped up and down. “Buck! Buck! Don’t leave without me! Promise me yoll won’t leave without me!” Buck promised.

That night there was a dance going on down in the quarter and they were “settin the floor,” but I didn’t go. Though I wasn’t sure if my life was in danger in the quarter, I surely wasn’t welcome and everybody stayed away from me. I walked slowly across the yard, past the chicken coop, and up the hill to the barn where the mules were.

My mule, Jim, was standing quietly eating hay. “Mule,” I said softly, “I has done plowed you fo the las time.”

The words startled me. I held my breath. “I has done plowed you fo the las time,” I repeated.

I stroked his head and then left the barn. The night was hot and the air thick. My body was wet with sweat. It felt like there was a fluttering bird inside my chest. “I is leavin this here place,” I whispered. “Yes, I believe I is leavin this here place.”

I walked back to Buck and Corrie’s but was too excited to go inside and go to sleep, so I walked up the familiar path which led to the Big House. I had walked that path for eight years, and I knew each lump and crag to it. When I reached the Big House, I stood by the wooden steps leading up to the back porch. Taking a breath, I opened the door and went inside. I could get a whupping for what I was doing, but I wanted to see Big Mac again.

It was quiet inside. Mary Webb was rolling dough on the big table in the center of the kitchen. She didn’t see me standing in the shadows. The kitchen looked exactly the same as it did the last time I was there, except a little smaller and dingier. I heard voices and hid behind the door. Mistress Beal entered the kitchen with Harriet.

“Harriet, we’ll be visitin tomorrow, and I want those crinolines pressed right nice. I want an extra pinafore for Anna, too, hear?”

The smoothing irons were heating on the cookstove, and I heard heavy feet brush across the kitchen floor.

I wondered where Miz Anna might be and if I could catch just one more look at her. I peeked around the corner. Mistress Beal had left the room, and Harriet was testing the smoothing irons on the stove. She wore men’s shoes on her bare feet, probably John’s throwaways. I was afraid if Mary Webb saw me she’d start to screaming and throwing things, so I remained hidden. After nearly an hour went by and Big Mac didn’t appear, I crept back across the porch and back out the screen door.

I had a longing to see Big Mac, and it was like a tight fist in my stomach. I searched the grounds around the chicken coop, the smokehouse, the well, woodpile, tool sheds, and barns for him, but I didn’t find him. I returned to Buck and Corrie’s shack that night feeling sad and uneasy.

Nearly every day when Buck had returned from the Big House, I had asked him about Big Mac, and he always answered the same, “Big Mac be fine, boy, jes fine.” This is all I had to carry with me for the rest of my life because I never saw him or heard from him again.

Buck and Corrie were in bed. I passed their bed quietly, but I wanted to talk to Buck. “Ssst,” I whispered. “Sssst.”

Buck grunted.

“Buck, don’t forgit me, please don’t forgit me.”

“OK, Robert, we won’t forgit you. Now go to sleep.”

I fell into a deep sleep, and I awoke Sunday morning long after daybreak. I lay for a moment or so in the stillness of the cabin, glad that we didn’t have to go to the field.

Then in a sudden panic I jerked up from the floor and ran to the partition. Climbing up on the woodbox, I peered over the top, not believing what I saw. The cabin was stripped bare. There wasn’t a pot or a rag left. Everything was gone—in fact, it didn’t look as though anyone had ever lived there. Black, dirty, empty, and damp. They were gone, gone without me. They were gone!

I leaped down from the box and ran to the door. The sun was shining and it must have been at least eight in the morning. Frantic, I ran across the yard and through the brush to the road. It was hopeless. There was nobody in sight and no way to find them.

I walked slowly back to the shanty, but I didn’t go inside. I walked on to the barn and stood beside my mule. “Jim,” I said, “they done gone without me.” The mule acted as though I weren’t even there. I filled the water tub, and as I stood there in the heat and the buzzing flies, I heard the sound of my own voice. “I has done plowed you fo the las time.”

Without even being aware of making a decision, I turned and walked out of that barn, walked down the dirt path toward the Big House, walked right past the Big House, past the circular drive, and onto the road leading to the highway.

The road was narrow and hot—the pebbles had barely cooled during the night before the morning sun began to bake them. I heard the insects in the grass, smelled the honeysuckle and azaleas. The road wound through the thick green clumps of trees, and the sky overhead was a deep, rich blue with thin trails of clouds scattered across it.

I walked along the road with my heart pounding loud in my chest. I could be tied up, I could be thrown into the back of a buggy and beaten. I could be strung up, I could be dragged by my heels—I could be— “Oh Lord, hepp me. Hepp me now.”

I reached the place in the narrow road where it met a wider dirt road, Abbeville Road. This is the road which led to Anderson. I took a breath and began to walk toward town. As I walked, the fear began to leave me. I had the feeling that I wasn’t alone—that there was someone walking alongside me very close, so close I could have touched Him.

“Jesus,” I whispered, “I know you with me, and I want to say, I’m thankin yoll.”

I passed a little cabin nestled behind some tall poplar trees. There were wooden chairs on the porch. I noticed the woodpile, the well, and the iron kettles out in the yard for washing clothes. There was the sound of birds singing everywhere. I walked kind of hunched over, never letting my eyes leave the house in case someone would take a shot at me or come running out after me. To my amazement, I saw a colored woman with two little children walking up a path by the cabin, and as they entered the cabin, she paused and waved a friendly “hi” to me. Then a tall man in overalls and a T-shirt followed the family into the house. He waved at me, too. I didn’t wave back. They could be some of Sam Beal’s people, and I hoped they wouldn’t guess what I was doing. I didn’t know they were free people.

I walked for several hours. Many cars passed, but nobody seemed to take any notice of me. One or two buggies passed by, too, drawn by white people, but there wasn’t a word said to me as they passed me. I couldn’t understand it. I fully expected to be caught and dragged back to the Beal Plantation.

Soon the plowed fields on either side of the road gave way to an occasional house, then more houses, some stores, and I was in town. It was midday, and I was very tired, hungry, and thirsty.

I walked along a road with a graveyard surrounded by barbwire along one side and houses on the other. There were black children playing in the street and in the yards. I stopped by a group of young men who were leaning against a stone wall opposite the graveyard. Remembering what Margie told me about a brother, I asked in a parched voice, “Do yoll know where Johnny Sadler live?”

“Sure,” one of the boys replied, “right down yonder, two blocks and turn to your right. It’s the end house.”

Johnny Sadler, I was sure that was the name my sister had given me. Johnny Sadler, my brother? Breathless and shaky, I walked up the quiet, hot dirt road to the end house on the right, two blocks down.

The unpainted house was set up on concrete blocks. There was a small wooden porch lined with pots of blooming plants. All around the dirt yard were rich green trees, and wild shrubbery and flowers.

I walked cautiously up to the porch. When I arrived at the door, I called, “Johnny Sadler!”

A woman came to the door. She wore a cotton dress and an apron, and her hair was tied up in a bandanna.

“Is this where Johnny Sadler live?”

“Yes,” she answered, a puzzled expression on her face.

“I be his brother, Robert Sadler, and I be runnin away from the Beal Plantation where I—”

“Oh my Lord!” she cried and, throwing open the door, she swept me inside.

“Johnny! Johnny!” she called. “Come in, honey. Come in and set down. Johnny!” I heard noises from another room, and in a few minutes a figure just awaking from sleep appeared in the doorway, smoothing his hair.

“Johnny!” the woman cried very excitedly, “this here is yor brother, yor brother Robert!”

The man’s mouth fell open, and his hands froze in midair. “Rob—” He walked over to me, looking at me with wide eyes. “Is you really Robert?” he asked.

“Yessuh,” I answered.

“How’d you git off’n that farm?”

“I done walked. I done walked off this mornin.”

“Oh, Lord A’mighty!”

The man and the woman looked at each other with alarm on their faces. Finally, the woman said, “Honey, you must be hungry. I’m gonna fix us all somethin to eat.”

She fixed a feast beyond anything I could imagine—eggs, grits, bacon, buttermilk biscuits, and hot coffee. They watched me eat with eyes so wide they were as big as the fried eggs on the plate.

“Didn’t you never learn how to use a fork, honey?” the woman asked.

“No, Ma’am,” I said, pushing the food into my mouth with my hands.

Johnny said, “Robert, you wasn’t nothin but a baby when I las saw you. I didn’t think I’d ever see yor lil ole face agin.”

He told me he had a job in Anderson working in a textile factory and that he had been working there a long time.

Over and over again he asked, “You mean yoll jes walked off down the road?” He shook his head and repeated, “Impossible, that’s impossible . . .”

“Well, I done it.”

He explained that it wouldn’t be safe for me to stay in Anderson because Sam Beal would be sure to be around looking for me. They decided to take me to the train station and put me on a train to Belton. From there I could catch a train to Greenville.

I grew frightened. The train station was where they caught John Henry.

“We got a cousin there yoll can stay with. Name Bessie. Bessie Watts.” He gave me a few dollar bills and folded them carefully into my pocket. Then the lady packed me a box lunch.

They took me to the station in a car. “Git down on the floor,” Johnny told me. “An’ stay there.” They were plenty scared as we drove, and they dropped me off about a half block from the station. I walked inside and did as they told me to do. I purchased a ticket to Belton and waited outside because I didn’t see any colored people in the station. They warned me to be careful not to sit where there were white folks. There was a special place for us. They drilled me about the bathrooms and drinking fountains, too.

I boarded the train without incident, though my heart was pounding wildly. When the train arrived in Belton, I still held my lunch on my lap untouched. I got off and went into the train station. The noise of the train, the newness of a depot and people, and the strange town terrified me.

The colored section of the station was easily recognized. It was a narrow room like a hallway that nobody bothered to clean. I saw a man and a woman and a child sitting on the bench in the back. I gasped at the sight of them. Buck and Corrie!

They were startled at the sight of me. Buck sprang to his feet and ran to the window. He hurried to the other side of the hallway and looked out the door.

Corrie began gathering things together and held her son to her heart. “Did you bring him, boy? Did you bring him with you?”

“Bring who?”

Buck hurried back to the bench. “Robert,” he said gruffly, taking my arm and holding it hard, “did yoll come here with Massuh Beal?”

“No, Buck!” I answered, surprised. “I done run away, too.”

“I swear, boy, if you done brought him, we all be daid, and then some—”

“Buck, I didn’t bring nobody. I done run away, too!”

Finally he let go my arm. I slumped down on the bench with them. They sat still, staring at me. I was quiet and didn’t look at them.

We got on the train and it was not until we were almost to Greenville that Buck could speak to me. “Robert, chile, we has been walkin all night. We took the desert way.”

“The desert way?”

“That’s right, boy. Through the woods, the fields, the back roads . . . We ain’t slept a dot—”

“Why didn’t you wake me, Buck? Why didn’t you take me with you?”

Buck looked at me sadly. “Son, if’n they’da caught us, they’da hung us, and I couldn’t do that to you.”

“But you promised!”

“Son, I couldn’t get ye killed.”

We wept together then, and I shared the lunch Johnny’s wife had prepared. There were apples, raisins, bacon sandwiches, and chocolate candy bars.

Buck and Corrie were exhausted and dirty. Their clothes were stained with mud and sweat. They had carried their belongings packed in boxes and blankets and toted six-year-old Adger over twenty miles through the swamps and woods of South Carolina to Belton, but they would not rest until they reached Greenville. They sat rigid, with their eyes darting up and down the aisle of the train, expecting any minute to see Sam Beal come bursting through the door to take them back.

We didn’t notice the rolling hills and the lush forests of the up country pass by the train’s window. We hardly saw the moss-draped oaks, the tall pines, or the flame azaleas and the mountain laurel in bloom. Our hearts beat in time with the clashing of the wheels of the train, and we would not rest until we reached Greenville. And even then, once in Greenville, there was no guarantee that we would be safe.

Photo Gallery

The “Big House,” to which I was brought as a slave in 1917

The Big House, 1975

Buck

Mary Webb, 1973

Detroit, 1936

My brother Johnny Sadler. I went to his home after escaping from the plantation.

Back row: sister Margie, brother Johnny, and his wife, Alberta

Front row: Aunt Julie and my father

Sister Margie with her son Alan and his wife, Betty Jane, 1945

Jackie’s Aunt Cora (left) and my sister Janey

Aunt Cora and me

The Children’s Radio Broadcast, Seneca, South Carolina (Jackie and I are in the back row, center.)

Baking bread in the Clemson College kitchen

Some friends gathered with us around the pump organ

Jackie and me, 1968

Jackie (left, back row), with friends, 1941

Manitoba Indians from the Bloodvein Reservation, where I ministered

Compassion House—my storefront church in Anderson, South Carolina

Me in 1975

My wife, Jackie

My ordination photo, 1963

21

Cousin Bessie’s house in Greenville, a white-washed wooden structure set on brick supports, had a narrow, sloping porch and three wooden steps leading up to it. The dirt yard was broken up with two or three small bushes, and two wooden boards laid in a crooked line served as a walkway from the dirt road.

I was made welcome and given a small room of my own with a bed, a glass window that went up and down, curtains, and a rug on the floor. There was a closet for hanging clothes and, wonder of wonders, sheets on the bed. Bessie had me take a bath in the large tin washtub outside in the backyard with some special soap. I had arrived covered with lice.

The soap burned my skin and she scrubbed my head with it, rinsing me off with a bucket of cold water. So this was what it was like to be clean.

Each day was shocking to me as I learned what it meant to be a free man. Bessie’s husband, Jake, was a porter in one of the hotels in town. He told me, “When you goes for a job, Robert, be sure’n say yessuh, nosuh, an’ act respec’ful.” He drilled me on how to act in town and on the streets. Smile real big and never look at a white woman. Never look at a white man for too long, and never act smart or like you knows any sense. He bought me a pair of shoes, a shirt, and overalls. I strutted around the house like a peacock in my new clothes.

“How old you, boy?”

“Fourteen June las,” I answered.

“Tell them you sixteen.”

I didn’t know a thing about working out, but I walked into a factory, asked for a job, and I was hired as a window washer. I worked ten hours a day, six days a week. I got up at 5:30 a.m., walked to work, and started at 7:00 a.m. I didn’t dare ask how much I would be earning, and on my first payday when I received my wages of four dollars, it was like discovering Fort Knox.

I spent that first paycheck almost entirely on candy. I pointed out almost everything I saw in the candy case to the grocery clerk. I also bought a quart of peach ice cream and a pocketknife, and gave the rest to Bessie. I ate the candy almost all at once and then ate the ice cream. My stomach hurt and Bessie scolded me. “Don’t eat till you sick, boy!”

“I had no idee,” I said weakly.

Cousin Jake drank a lot of whiskey, and one morning after he’d been out all night, someone poisoned him. He managed to get himself home and into his bed. He lay there moaning and complaining, and Bessie thought he was drunk. He died while she was in the kitchen fixing him some coffee.

Nothing was done about the murder. If black people kill black people that’s their own business. The police came, asked Bessie some questions, and then left. We never heard another thing about it. When Bessie asked her friends what to do, they advised her to do nothing. “The whites don’t care if’n it ain’t one of them.”

I continued at my job, and the day after the funeral Bessie went back to her job cooking for a white family on the other side of town. Then she started drinking, too, and pretty soon she was drunk every night. She even went to work in a drunken state sometimes. I hoped she was as smart as Mary Webb, who drank all the time and somehow never got found out.

One afternoon toward the end of the summer of 1925 Buck paid me a visit at my cousin’s. I was overjoyed to see him. “Man! You doin OK!” he exclaimed when he saw me. “Them bones is sure fatter than when I saw yoll last!”

He told me about a job opportunity in Florida he was all excited about. “They needs workers!” he told me. “They’s astin for men to go and work, and they’ll pay the fare and take it outa the wages later on.”

It sounded like a good deal, and it was an opportunity to get farther away from Sam Beal. I finished the week at my window washing job, said good-bye to Bessie, and boarded the train with Buck to Vero Beach, Florida.

The train was crowded. The car we rode in was jammed with Negro men of all ages going to Florida, where—the promotion told us—work and riches waited for us. Our hopes were built up big. For us, who had never hoped for anything at all, it was a new and unfamiliar feeling we weren’t sure about.

Vero Beach was one big undevelopment. Forest, swamp, sand, and ocean was almost all there was to it. Buck and I got hired by a big land company, and our job was to work clearing the land for development.

I stayed close to Buck and wherever he went, I went. One day we got separated, and I was sent to a different section of land to work. “Watch out for them rattlers!” a worker warned me. I shrugged and said, “Yessuh,” but I honestly didn’t know what he meant.

I took my scrub hoe and began digging up palmetto trees. I was in a spot all by myself when I heard a rattling noise. I turned and saw the biggest, longest, and fattest snake I had ever seen. Its fangs were ripping, ready to dig into me. I screamed frantically, and some of the men came running. They tore at that snake with their hoes and killed it. Then they dug up its hole and found about twenty little baby rattlers which they killed too.

“Thank you, Jesus” was about all I could say. I was so scared that I didn’t know what to do with myself. I was too scared to work because of the rattlers, and I was too scared not to work. I was so backward and naïve that I didn’t dare open my mouth.

On payday we found that the train fare had been deducted, which was a violation of the agreement that said they would wait to deduct the fare for at least three paychecks. Buck was unhappy about the situation.

“Come on, Robert,” he growled. I followed him to the highway. “You and me, we done had nuff a white men robbin us,” he said, and he had had enough of Vero Beach and getting rich; he was going back to Corrie and his boy. “Reckon yoll stay or come on with me, Robert?” Naturally, I’d go back with him.

We hitchhiked some, but mostly walked. Day after day we walked. A white man in a Ford sedan picked us up outside of Sebastian and carried us to Melbourne. He had a greasy face and eyes that kept rolling back and forth from us to the road. He asked questions about sex and black anatomy from the time we got into the car until we got out. It made me sick, but Buck said it was nothing unusual. “Them white mens, they think all us Negro mens is studs, and they want to know all about it.”

We slept outside by the roadside at night. We walked over sixty miles and reached Daytona Beach worn out and hungry. We went to a house near the highway and asked if maybe they could spare a little food. The white lady, probably in her early twenties, said, “Sure! Set youselves down on the porch and I’ll be fixin yoll some food.”

She served us chicken noodle soup, white bread with butter, and black coffee. Then she gave us both a piece of blueberry pie. I had never tasted blueberry pie and gobbled it up practically without chewing. When we had finished eating, she sat down on the porch with us. She had a smile on her face.

“Yoll look plumb tuckered.”

“Yes, Ma’am.”

“Best linger on the porch awhile and rest yourselves.”

“Thank you, Ma’am.”

“I just want you to know that I’m all for you folks.”

“Hunh?”

“I believe all the trouble with the Ku Klux Klan is a crying shame, I do. All that fuss because families want to be free. Killings, hangings, tarrings, whuppings, brandings, tearing down property—it’s a crying shame.”

“Yes, Ma’am.”

“I think Mr. DuBois has the right idea, if you want my opinion. Oh, you people have such talent, too! I have a Victrola and I listen to records. I listen to Oliver’s Creole Jazz Band, Louis Armstrong and the Hot Five, Bix Beiderbecke—of course, he’s white.”

“Yes, Ma’am.”

The young woman, who had very green eyes that looked directly at a person, paused for a moment. Then she said brightly, “You know, I just loved reading Uncle Tom’s Cabin. I just cried and cried.”

“Oh.”

“I just want yoll to know that I’m all for you folks.” She sighed and stood to her feet. Turning, she said, “I want yoll to know it has been an honor to have you eat on my porch today.”

“Thank you, Ma’am.”

“Now yoll just rest, and I’ll be taking my leave.”

When she went inside, I looked at Buck and he looked as scared as I felt. We were too tired to go anywhere, though, and we fell asleep in the cool shade of the porch, leaning against the steps. When we awoke, there were about six little white children standing and staring at us. It might sound crazy for two grown men to be terrified of a few small children, but we were. They were staring at us and when we opened our eyes, one of them squealed, and another one jumped up and down, acting foolish. The young woman came running out of the back door.

“What’s going on here?” she demanded, waving her arms at us.

One of the children smiled at me and stepped toward me, holding her hand out. I smiled back at her.

“Ginger Amy! Don’t you touch him!”

Buck and I recoiled against the porch. “Don’t you try anything!” the woman said. She was very frightened. The veins in her forehead were standing out and her face was red.

“And to think I cried when Booker T. Washington died!”

“Ma’am, we didn’t mean no harm—”

Just then there was a man’s voice from inside the house. “Rosemary, what’s going on out there?”

Buck jerked away from the porch. “Thank you kindly for the meal, Ma’am,” and he turned and hightailed it for the field adjoining the house. I followed on his heels.

We could hear the children cheering and the man’s voice from the porch. “My gawd, Rosemary, was those Negroes?”

Later that night as Buck and I lay on our backs looking up at the stars, I asked him, “Why for that woman be so kindly and then change and act so poorly to us?”

Buck studied on it. “The way I sees it, Robert,” he said, “is that she be big on the talkin side but short on the bein side.”

We got out of Daytona Beach and walked until we reached Ormond Beach. There we found a place on the sand near the water to rest our feet. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky, and the sound of the ocean rolling upon the shore was soothing and calming, like a sweet lullaby.

A colored family in a pickup truck stopped for us and carried us to Saint Augustine. From there we walked to Jacksonville. We had very little money left, and Buck decided we would have to find jobs and get some money up before we could make it the rest of the way back to South Carolina.

“With two of us, it won’t take no time hardly at all,” he said confidently.

But it took two years.

22

Jacksonville’s downtown district is set in a bend of the St. Johns River where the river turns eastward to join the Atlantic Ocean, some ten miles away. Buck and I walked the crowded hot streets, and then we turned into a building that a taxi driver told us was an agency hiring laborers. We climbed two flights of wooden steps and entered a small, hot waiting room with several benches lined up in rows, behind which were low swinging doors and some desks where a white woman and two white men were sitting.

There were no other men in the waiting room, and so Buck and I stood quietly waiting until one of the men called out, “Either one of you done cement work?” Buck answered quickly, “Oh yessuh, yessuh, we has.” I was surprised at his lie, but went along with it. For the next two years we worked mixing mortar for a building contractor.

We rented a room in a rooming house in south Jacksonville. Every weekend there was a party going on. I was very shy about being around people, but Buck encouraged me to go to the parties. “Come on, Robert, you needs some fun!”

“I don’t want to go to no party nohow.”

“Boy, you is crazy!”

“I don’t want to go to no party, Buck.”

When Buck would persist, I’d flare with frustration. “Buck, I been locked in a white man’s house most mah natural life! I been in prison in thet Big House! I was put out to the field an’ live like a animal— How’s yoll spect me to act right around wimmin and parties!”

“You forgit. You a human bean jes like everybody else. Jes watch ole Buck, thas all. Do like I does an’ yoll be fine.”

He would go to the parties, and I usually stayed in the room. Occasionally I would walk around south Jacksonville to get out, but I wasn’t used to freedom. I was always looking over my shoulder. The palm trees were beautiful, sweeping the sky with their long, slim fronds, and the air was sweet and fresh. It felt good to just look around. I bought ice cream almost every day and I would have lived on ice cream alone if I could have.

I thought of Mary Webb making ice cream for the Beal family. I was forbidden to go near the bowls of sliced peaches and the huge pans of cold, rich ice cream. I could remember the sick longing for just one tiny drop on the end of my tongue, and now here I was, eating peach ice cream to my heart’s content.

Bananas sold for a nickel a bunch, and I would buy them and eat as many as ten at once. I had never tasted bananas, or most fruits, having only gotten fruit once a year at Christmastime on the plantation, and then only hard oranges and soft peaches. I went on an all-out eating binge. Peanuts, candy, apples, oranges, pears, peaches, pineapple, pastries, and ice cream. Whatever I saw that looked good, I bought and ate. While I worked on my job I dreamed of the delicious treats that waited for me.

There was a young white clerk in a grocery store on Atlantic Avenue who waited on me one afternoon. He was a college student, I believe. I heard him laughing as I was leaving the store.

“Man,” he clucked, “it sure don’t take much to make a nigger happy. Just give him some candy and some ice cream and he thinks he’s in heaven!”

I discovered clothing stores, too. I bought shirts, pants, socks, underwear, a leather belt, a green cap, and a ring with a shiny blue stone. Underwear and socks were a luxury I couldn’t get used to. I felt silly wearing such unnecessary things. Inexperienced with buying clothes, I often brought consternation to the store clerks.

“Lemme have one of them red shirts.”

“Which shirt do you mean?”

“Any one. Jes so it’s red.”

“All right, what size do you wear?”

“Uh, I don’t know.”

“—You don’t know?”

“No. I’ll take any one.”

I needed some shoes. In the white stores Negroes weren’t allowed to try anything on so I chose the shoes that looked the shiniest and most impressive. I bought shoes that were much too small for me and pinched my feet terribly. When I got back to our room, I practiced tying the laces until I had it right and then wore those too-tight shoes until they were worn out. They left painful bumps and corns, but I didn’t know any better. I didn’t know that shoes weren’t supposed to hurt.

Buck and I talked about getting back to Anderson, but every payday the money went out, and we never had enough to last from week to week. Buck became quite popular with the girls, and there were always one or two chasing him.

There was one girl in particular named Beulah who had Buck thinking he was the finest man on earth. I never cared for her, and she didn’t like me too well either. Beulah hung around Buck all the time like he was honey on a stick, and when Buck got to trusting her, she up and ran off with his paycheck and every stitch of his clothes. She even took his frying pan and his hair cream. He was stripped bare by the time Beulah was finished with him.

“Serves you right, Buck!” I laughed. “Parties and wimmin! ‘Jes watch ole Buck’!”

Finally in September of 1927, two years after we arrived in Jacksonville and three months after my sixteenth birthday, we boarded a train for South Carolina. We had two five-dollar bills between us. I was sixty pounds heavier and as round as a grapefruit. Buck was lean, strong, and handsome, and he knew it.

We rode in silence, and my mind went back to the Beal Plantation. I thought about Big Mac and wondered how he was doing. I tried to imagine him at work in the smokehouse or in the kitchen cooking for the hired hands. Buck saw the look on my face.

“Robert, where you is?”

“I’s jes thinkin, Buck.”

“Look like you studying on it mighty hard.”

“Uhm.”

I remembered Big Mac’s delight when I beat up the Beal boys that afternoon. “Law diddie law diddie, law dee ay . . .” Oh, Lord, some things are so hard to think on, a man would almost rather have the whip on his back than suffer certain remembrances in his mind.

“When you last see Big Mac?” I asked Buck suddenly.

“Hunh?”

“I ain’t laid eyes on him, Buck, not after they put me outa the Big House.”

“Don’t trouble your mind, Robert—”

“They gonna be a day I gonna see him agin, Buck. I has to see Mac agin!”

Buck was very serious then. He put his head down and said in a low voice, “Robert, they’s somethin’ I never done tole ye . . .”

I held my breath.

“I jes couldn’t tell ye, what with you bein in the bad spot you was in. I mean, we didn’t know if you was gonna be alive one sunup from the next . . .”

“Say what you has to say, Buck.”

“Wal, Robert, ye gotta understand that you was sech a young feller—hardly nothin’ but a dumb lil ole boy who tuk to stealin . . .”

“Buck, say it out.”

“Big Mac is dead, boy.”

“Lord!”

“I couldn’t tell ye!” Buck struggled to speak. “After you was sent out to the field, he jes died. They say it was of a fever. He had some bad burns on his body, and he was a old man. . . .”

There are certain feelings you get when your world is so low it hardly seems it could get lower. It’s like when your nose is broken so many times you’d almost look forward to breaking a foot. Or when you’ve done so much crying that laughter becomes pain. I didn’t speak again on the way to Greenville. If Buck spoke to me, I didn’t hear him. I looked out the window and saw only a black furrowed face with a long silver scar along one side.

In Greenville, Buck hugged me good-bye, and I watched him run down the hill toward town, past the bars and cafés, and around the bend along the twisting road to town. Corrie would be waiting. I stood alone on the platform for several minutes. I was sixteen years old, I couldn’t read or write, I had no place to go and no one to go to.

I walked slowly toward town with my grip in one hand and a paper bag of Florida oranges in the other. I walked until the paved streets ended and the dirt ones began. You can always tell when the pavement is behind you and the dust of the road hits your face that you’re in the colored section of town.

Remembering her street, I walked to Cousin Bessie’s where I had stayed before, but when I got to the door a stranger answered. “Bessie done moved to Charlotte,” a pleasant, round-faced black woman told me. “Her husband died and she just up and left for Charlotte. Who’re you?”

“I’m Robert Sadler, Bessie’s cousin.”

“She got a sister, Gertrude, living right down yonder,” she told me, and so I picked up my grip and oranges and walked in the direction she pointed.

Cousin Gertrude was a thin young woman with cinnamon skin. She wore a cotton print dress with an apron tied around her middle. I explained who I was, and she invited me in with a bright smile.

“Yoll must be plumb tuckered!” she exclaimed, and fixed me a meal of fried catfish, greens, corn bread, and hot coffee. “Eat aplenty now, hear?”

Cousin Gertrude was an avid church member and an enthusiastic Christian who believed in getting a person saved and sanctified immediately. She let me stay there and preached night and day to me. I listened politely, respecting my memories of Miss Ceily and the experiences I had worshiping the Lord with the others on the Beal Plantation. I remembered Ceily’s genuine love for God and her intensely personal relationship with Him.

“Robert, you needs to be saved! You come over to church with me to the meeting and get saved before it’s too late.”

I experienced the same feeling in Cousin Gertrude’s church as the day I sat by the water’s edge with Miss Ceily and the slaves on the Beal Plantation. The exuberant singing, the earnest and powerful prayers ringing through the air, the happy faces and swaying bodies—it all touched me deeply. I felt again the sweet presence of a living God, a God who cared and who was a giver of love and justice. I began to sing along with the rest of the people:

King Jesus is a-listenin all day long

That Gospel train is comin

A-rumblin through the land

But I hear them wheels a-hummin

Get ready to board that train!

I know I’ve been converted

I ain’t gon’ make no alarm

For my soul is bound for glory

And the devil can’t do me no harm

Glory! Jesus has made me new,

Glory! I’m alive in the heavenly land,

Glory! I know the Bible be true

The Lord hold me in His nail-scarred hand!

Soon I was weeping. The next thing I knew, I was on my knees at the tarrying bench at the front of the church.

There was much carrying on over me that night as the women sang and prayed over me. As I prayed, I felt the weight of bitterness and fear begin to slide away from me, and by the time I arrived home, I felt at peace with myself.

I helped Gertrude with the housework, doing things like washing floors and keeping things clean. The rest of the time I stayed by myself sitting on the porch smelling honeysuckle and watching the sun rise and set. The winding dirt road was peaceful and quiet in the heat at any time of day.

When I’d run an errand to the store, I’d pass the close-together wooden shanties, the people sitting on their porches, and I’d hear the friendly hellos. I’d smile back and I’d hear the birds and children’s voices at play. Outwardly the neighborhood was peaceful and quiet. But inside the heart of the neighborhood was a different story. Most of the wooden shacks had a mother and a bunch of children with no father. The grannies and granpappies living with them were supported by the breadwinning woman who washed clothes or scrubbed floors for white folks six days a week for fifty cents a day. Their diet was mainly salt pork, corn bread, chitlins, and greens. With their sweat they built and cared for the fancy homes of the white folks in town while their own homes were little better than shacks and their children ran barefoot and untended. Where was the freedom in freedom? I wondered.

I needed a job, and Gertrude suggested I go to Winston-Salem, North Carolina, to her brother Caldojah. He was a preacher on weekends and a factory worker during the day at John Reynolds Tobacco Company. She called him on the telephone to ask if he might be able to help me get a job. I packed my grip with my red shirt and my socks on a Saturday morning in late October and boarded a Greyhound bus for Winston-Salem.

Cousin Caldojah was kind enough to meet me at the station in Winston-Salem. He was a heavy young man with a broad face and deep-set eyes. He welcomed me wholeheartedly and took me into his little shanty with his wife and seven children and treated me as though I were one of his own sons. The day after I arrived he brought me to the employment office at John Reynolds Tobacco Company, and I got a job in the lumberyard stacking lumber at ten dollars a week. That was more money than I ever held in my hand at one time.

Caldojah couldn’t read or write, but he sure could preach. The first Sunday I attended services at the little shack that had been converted into a meeting hall. A large woman they called Mother Shepherd swooped me into her arms and kissed me on the cheeks. “Praise the Lord!” she shouted in a voice that could have brought the Blue Ridge Mountains tumbling down upon us.

“Yes, Ma’am,” I said in a weak voice.

“Jesus is wonderful!” she boomed.

“Yes, Ma’am, He surely be,” I answered with a faint smile.

“Honey, we’re on our way to glory!” She gave me a squeeze, and if it had been any harder I would have departed for glory right then.

When I had caught my breath, I found a seat on one of the benches, and Mother Shepherd brought the people over to meet me one by one. I was made to feel very important and special. I loved Mother Shepherd immediately.

I thought the meeting was wonderful. The joy and acceptance I experienced were what I needed. Joy and love flooded that little ole shack. Caldojah preached with power and authority on Bible verses he had memorized, since he couldn’t read. He concluded his message with, “This here world gonna pass away, but Jesus, He gonna last forever!” The tiny congregation burst into claps and singing. I felt strengthened from heart to toe, and I thanked the Lord for bringing me to Winston-Salem.

Mother Shepherd tucked my arm under hers and told me with a broad smile,“Honey, I gone teach you God’s mo excellent way.”

Mother Shepherd became my closest friend. After work in the lumberyard I would go home, get me a good little wash-off right quick, change clothes, and go to her place. Usually there would be others there, too. We would talk about the Lord most of the night.

Mother Shepherd had a friend about seventy years old named Sister Agnes, who was blind. She would often be at Mother Shepherd’s, sitting straight as a stick in the wooden chair, and you could hear her strong, throaty voice a block away singing and praising the Lord.

On Saturday and Sunday afternoons Mother Shepherd and blind Sister Agnes would go out on the streets and preach to whoever would listen. When they asked me to come along with them I wondered, Do they really go out and preach on the street where people are? What will I do? I don’t speak right. I’m deaf in one ear. And besides, I feared white folk.

We must have made an amusing picture as we inched our way down the street, Mother Shepherd and I walking on either side of Sister Agnes, holding her arms and carrying Bibles which we couldn’t read. Sister Agnes would begin singing before we had even stopped anywhere. It didn’t matter where we were, she would bust out in song with her deep, throaty voice whenever she felt so moved.

The teenagers in the neighborhood made fun of me with these two old ladies. They’d tease me: “Why, Robert, you lil ole granny, you!” When they followed us, laughing and making deriding remarks, Sister Agnes would stop in her tracks, turn in the direction of their voices, and sing “Ole Devil Gonna Take You Soul” loud enough to be heard in Asheville.

Then Mother Shepherd, never missing an opportunity, would follow with a hair-raising sermon on the “mo excellent way.” Sister Agnes would shout loud amens at nearly every sentence, and sometimes she’d lift her heels and commence to dance.

I actually learned to look forward to those meetings on the street with Sister Agnes and Mother Shepherd. I didn’t care how ridiculous we must have looked, and I didn’t mind the teenagers teasing me. We prayed for each of them beforehand, and I was quite confident that the Lord was going to help them and save them.

One afternoon as we stood on a street corner, four of those teenage boys approached us and mocked, “Show us how to know Jesus and that mo excellent way, like you talkin about.” Mother Shepherd, with a heart as big as all heaven itself, took those boys in her arms and led each of them to the Lord right there on the street while Sister Agnes hummed and danced a little jig without tripping once.

How Mother Shepherd loved to pray! When she laid hands on people, sick people got well, people who were bound by demons were set free, and sad people became released from the grip of depression. I watched it all with admiration swelling up in me. Mother Shepherd really knew the God she talked about. She knew Him like a true friend and trusted Him to do what she asked of Him. He always seemed to answer her, too. I prayed that I could know the Lord like Mother Shepherd knew Him.

It came time to head back to Greenville. Mother Shepherd wept when I told her I had to go, and the day I left they had a little party for me. Sister Agnes, though she was blind, was a great cook, and she made fried chicken and grits, string beans, and my favorite, poke salad. Mother Shepherd baked sweet potato pie. There was hot coffee and iced tea to drink. We kept our conversation happy and light.

Mother Shepherd embraced me as I left, and kissed me. We both knew it was probably the last time we’d see each other. Tears burned my eyes as I walked up the dirt road toward town and the bus station. I could hear Sister Agnes and Mother Shepherd singing, their voices low, mournful, and sad, mingled with the sunshine and dust in the air,

Bye and bye, when the morning comes,

When the saints of God are gathered home,

We will tell the story of how we’ve overcome,

For we’ll understand it better bye and bye . . .

23

Back in Greenville I lived with my aunt Julie, who was cousin Gertrude’s and Bessie’s mother. She was a kind woman, short with coal black skin. She wore her hair cornrowed or tied in a rag, and I never saw her with a pair of shoes on her feet except for the coldest days of winter. She worked in white folks’ homes around the town, washing and ironing. She walked to and from work every day, leaving her children to care for themselves until she returned late each night.

Aunt Julie’s husband had died two years earlier of pneumonia, leaving her with a broken-down house and the care of five of their thirteen children. The oldest children, including Caldojah, Bessie, and Gertrude, were married and had families of their own. Four were dead, and that left five at home, the youngest not yet three years old. “Before now, I don’t hardly ever recollect being without a baby in my arms or on the way,” she told me in her low, soft voice.

I got a job at a cotton mill for eight dollars a week. They said they were looking for men to run machines, but they gave me a job cleaning toilets.

At night Aunt Julie would sit in a big chair in the middle of the big room, or on the sloping porch with the children all around, and we would talk. Aunt Julie was a wonderful talker. She had a captivating way of telling stories.

“You know, Robert, I fought with yor daddy about selling you. I woulda takin yoll in myself, but he wouldn’t hear of it,” Aunt Julie told me tearfully. “He wanted thet money.”

With a stinging sensation in my throat I wondered what it might have been like to grow up in a home with my own people.

“You been under slavery, chile, but we been under it, too,” she said. “They didn’t sell us, but they had us. If we fought, they killed the fight; if we didn’t fight, they killed the fight in us.”

I thought about Mother Shepherd’s more excellent way. She said that anger and hostility only produced more anger and hostility, and black folk had had enough of that. There was a lot to think about.

When Aunt Julie discovered that I couldn’t read or write, she set aside a learning time for me at night after supper at the kitchen table.

With the plates cleared and the table washed, we would sit down with the other children and she would write big letters on a brown paper bag with a pencil, and I would try to copy them. I remembered how to print ROBERT SADLER and how to count to twenty. Now I was learning the alphabet and how to count to a hundred. I don’t know where Aunt Julie got her education, but she could even read the newspaper.

I spent many nights at that table learning to write THIS THAT THERE. THIS IS A DOG. THAT IS A DOG. THERE IS A DOG. I worked hard scrawling out the letters on the brown paper.

Aunt Julie taught us from the Bible, too. She taught me how to find Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. And how to find verses. She taught me words like GOD and JESUS and LOVE. As I ran my hands over the smooth pages of her worn Bible, I thought of the Bible at the Big House on the plantation. It sat on the shelf in the parlor and I heard Mistress read out loud from it several times. I remembered hearing the words “And it came to pass . . .” I thought they were thrilling words.

“Aunt Julie?”

“Yes, Robert?”

“Where do it say ‘And it came to pass’ in the Bible?”

After some searching, she found those words, and in another couple of days I could write ROBERT SADLER and THERE IS A DOG and 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 and IT CAME TO PASS.

I continued to work at the cotton mill, giving most of my salary to Aunt Julie. I joined Aunt Julie’s church and faithfully attended, and yet something inside of me still kept troubling me.

The restlessness in me is hard to explain. I was a free man but I had no gathering place for my mind. Eating occupied most of my time. I searched out candies in wrappers, layered ice cream cakes, fancy pastries, real meat like smoked pork ribs, and anything with gravy or frosting. I could still hardly believe I could eat anything I wanted. But as the days wore on I realized I couldn’t live on the kindness of cousins and aunts forever. I didn’t know what to do. Where to go. I didn’t know how to be a free man.

I had studied plenty on freedom. Negroes rode in the back of the buses and drank from separate drinking fountains than the whites. They walked with their heads down on the streets, and they got jobs cleaning toilets or doing hard labor for less money than it took to feed their families and pay their rent. I had watched plenty of free colored people who had come up from slavery like me. Many became drunks and alcoholics; they lived lives of confusion and powerlessness; some men joined the army, and some got hard labor jobs in the cities. The most powerless of all were the women. I saw good, strong women who considered themselves lucky to be underpaid domestics and bathroom attendants. Some turned to prostitution to keep their children from starving.

I was living with an ache, like the kind you get if you’ve broken a leg. It’s always there, you just can’t get around the same. I finally decided that if Sam Beal would take me back, I would return and work for him—why, I’d work hard as a mule for him, and then I’d sit down with my feet in the dirt and my head in the grass and I’d watch the sun go down. This thing called freedom was exasperating. You didn’t know what was coming next. As a slave, I knew what to expect.

Maybe going back to the plantation was the answer to my discontent, and maybe it wasn’t. I wasn’t looking for an answer. I was just hungry for something familiar. I chose to return to the only place in my life that I’d known as home, the place I belonged. I announced to the cousins that I was going back to Anderson.

“You gone do what?”

“You heard right. I’m going back to Sam Beal’s place.”

Aunt Julie let loose with a high-pitched wail. “Have you gone and lost yo mind?”

“I’m goin back to the plantation,” I said. “I wants to see Sam Beal agin.”

“Robert, they’ll keep you and you’ll never get off that place! Lord knows what they’ll do to you. Git it in yor haid—you free now!”

I studied on it and told her my head was full-up with so much free. I was through with all this free. I wanted to tell her free was just a word, but I kept still. I didn’t want to hurt her feelings.

In the budding spring of 1928, three years after my escape, I boarded a bus and headed back to my old master.

24

I took a taxi from the bus station in Anderson to the Beal Plantation. The colored driver kept peering at me in his rearview mirror. “You shure yoll know whey you goin?”

“I be goin home,” I told him. He didn’t say anything after that.

The spring air was hot and sweet with the smell of honeysuckle. Flowering dogwood bloomed along the roadside, and spotted irises and violets grew wild in the woods and ditches. The air was filled with the music of the starlings, the jays, and the finches. My heart beat wildly with excitement and fear underneath my new red knit shirt. My grip sat on the seat beside me.

As we neared the plantation, I could actually sense the oppression in the air. It was something unexplainable. Even the taxi driver grew agitated as we neared the place, and when we arrived at the Big House, he refused to pull up in front of it.

“Git out here, Uncle,” he told me flatly. “I ain’t drivin up there.”

The sounds of the taxi driving off, the barking of the dogs, and the clucking of chickens filled the air as I stared unbelievingly at the grand old plantation home I had left just three years ago.

It was a junkyard, a shambles. It sat bent and wounded against the sky like a defeated and broken soldier. My mouth dropped open. “Lord, have mercy.”

I walked around the side of the house through weeds, broken wheels, cans, and pieces of lumber to the kitchen door. There was no answer when I knocked, so I left my grip under the porch and began walking across the yard. I walked through the weeds to Buck and Corrie’s shanty. It was empty and dark, and mice ran squeaking through the hay scattered across the floor. The partition that Buck had built was still there.

I continued walking. The path to the quarter was nearly grown over with weeds. As I walked along, I heard workers in the field. Looking up and shielding my eyes from the sun, I saw several figures bent and plowing in the field.

“Lord a’mighty!”

It was John Beal doing the plowing! And Thomas! And behind them spreading seed were Juanita and Virginia! I ran to the edge of the field. Could it be true? Was I dreaming?

It was true all right. The Beal children were plowing and planting. I ran on to the quarter to look for my friends. There was no sign of anybody. From shack to shack I ran—all empty. I couldn’t get to Miss Ceily’s shanty fast enough. There wasn’t a shred of evidence that she had ever been there. Some wooden boards slapped together over a piece of dirt—that was all there had ever been, but now the life was gone, and it was ugly and terrible. I felt sick and sat down on her step to catch my breath.

On my way back to the Big House, Thomas saw me from the field. He dropped the handles of the plow. “Ho there!” he shouted. I stopped and looked at him, unmoving. He shouted again, and it was obvious he didn’t recognize me.

I stepped over the furrows and mounds of dirt to him. John and the girls stopped to watch. Thomas’s mouth dropped when he recognized me.

“Rob-Robert? Robert!” I thought for a second he was going to run to me and embrace me, but he caught himself. “Robert!” he repeated.

“Hello, Thomas,” I said. “What’s happened here? Why you out in the field plowing?”

“Robert, we’ve lost everything. All the land we have left is what you see right here. Everybody and everything is gone.”

“Your father?”

“He’s in the house, sick . . . very sick.”

“Where are the slaves?”

“All gone. All set free.”

“Praise the Lord,” I said. “I’m sorry for you, Thomas, but I’m glad they’re free.”

“You come back here after bein out there in the great big world, huh! Why you come back, Robert?”

“I want to see your father again,” I answered. “In a funny way, he’s my father, too.”

Thomas’s eyes were riveted to mine. “Uh-huh,” he said.

I left him in the field and made my way back to the Big House. I went to the porch door and knocked. There was no answer, and so I pushed it open. The kitchen was a mess of dirty dishes and pans, opened boxes and jars of food left on the tables, greasy walls, mud-streaked floors, and flies everywhere. Mary Webb would never let her kitchen get like this. Never!

After standing at the door and surveying the room for a few stunned moments, I turned and walked out. The well off the porch was still there, and I drew the bucket up for a drink of water. I wondered if I had been the last one to sweep the porch—it was littered with straw, rags, and layers of hardened mud and the acrid smell of dogs.

I heard someone coming into the kitchen just then, and I put the bucket down and hurried to the doorway. “Hello!” I called.

A woman with uncombed hair in a worn housecoat and bedroom slippers shuffled toward me. “What do you want?” she demanded.

I stared in disbelief. “Miz Beal . . .” I breathed. She eyed me suspiciously.

“Ma’am, it’s me, Robert.”

Her eyes narrowed. “—Robert!”

“Yes, Ma’am.”

She pulled herself upright. “What do you want, Robert?”

“Please, Ma’am, I come back.”

“You come back?”

“Yes, Ma’am.” I fidgeted with my hands and tried to think of something more to say.

“Thomas tole me Master Beal be ailin,” I said at last.

“That’s right. He’s up in the bed ailin.”

“I’m hopin I kin see him.”

She looked confused and shuffled to the sink. “You wants to see him?”

“Yes, Ma’am. I needs to talk to Master Beal.”

She turned her back and said to the wall, “No, you may not!”

“Oh please, Ma’am, I won’t be no bother. I needs to tell him I come ba—”

“Yoll up to no good, Robert? You don’t fool me none. Yoll fixin to do evil, Robert. No, you ain’t seein Master Beal! Now you can just git off the place.”

“Ma’am, please?”

She paused for a moment, as though she were considering my request. Surveying me, she said, “Gawd, boy, you gained some weight. You is positively fat!”

“Yes, Ma’am,” I said. “I been eatin’ good.”

She gave a snicker. “I can see that, boy. I can see that. Yoll growed up since you run off.”

“Yes, Ma’am. I’ll soon be seventeen.”

“Uh-huh. Same as Thomas. . . .”

“Yes, Ma’am.”

She had seemed friendly for a flashing moment, but then a mix of anger and fear flew across her face. “Well, you can’t see Master Beal. He’s ailing, and I got a shotgun, so git off the place.”

I lowered my head. “Yes, Ma’am,” but before turning to leave, I made one more request. “Ma’am, how is Miss Anna?”

“Miss Anna be jes fine!” she said, squinting her eyes at me.

“Ma’am, could I see her?”

Outraged now, Mrs. Beal shouted, “Who you think you is? Comin in here givin orders like you some big shot! You may not see Miss Anna, and you may not see Master Beal! You want me to call the po-lice? Now get off this place before I get the shotgun!”

I walked back to Anderson with my grip, taking the same route I had taken almost four years ago. I was like hundreds of other blacks who had grown up under slavery. I was set free in a world I didn’t understand, and I didn’t know who I was or where to belong. I knew in my head that I belonged to the Lord and the Bible said He loved me, but when I thought of love I got a picture of hanging onto the coattails of Master Beal in the wagon on the way to the dentist in town, and a beautiful ebony face with a long silver scar from his forehead to chin, and pretty Pearl rocking me in her bruised arms. I remembered the smell of chitlins boiling in the quarter and the sweet taste of sucking the bones of chicken necks. If I studied on it hard enough I could hear my mama’s voice singing about heaven, and I could hear Miz Ceily praying for me. At seventeen years old I couldn’t read or write, I had no money and nowhere to go. I was no longer a slave—but I wasn’t free either. Everything I knew of the great big world I learned on the plantation.

25

I remembered my sister Janey lived in Anderson somewhere, and after walking the streets I found her house on Fant Street. She wasn’t all that happy to see me, but she let me move in with her. Margie was living there, too, with her two little boys. Her husband had left her after she had the second baby.

Margie was overjoyed to have me near her. In the first weeks she fussed over me more than her own children. She washed my clothes, cooked for me, sewed me things, and pomaded my hair with fancy Sweet Georgia Brown hair pomade. Janey didn’t like the special attention given me—it irritated her. She was already cold toward me, and Margie’s affection added to her annoyance.

“You fashionin that boy into a old lady, Margie.”

“I be carin for him, Janey, and I’ll do as I please.”

Janey’s house was anything but peaceful. She often had temper tantrums; she got drunk, brought boyfriends home who she fought with, and if it wasn’t the boyfriends she fought with, it would be Margie or me or the children. She thought nothing of whupping Margie’s boys, and this infuriated Margie. The oldest child, Alan, was four years old, and the baby, Walter, was about two and a half. The way Janey treated them put me in mind of how our stepmother, Rosie, had treated us. Seem like kin is hateful, too. I was glad when I got a job on a small farm outside of Anderson and was gone from the house most of the day and night.

I went to work at plowing time for a white farmer named Wheeks. He was a kind man, and he had a stout, friendly wife who was just as nice as he was. They often invited the hired hands to eat lunch with them, which scared me at first. If we be caught eating at the same table with whites it meant a whupping, or worse. Mrs. Wheeks would fix pig hocks, boiled cabbage, corn bread, custard, and fresh fruit pies. I never knew white folks so nice. Maybe there were some good white folk in the great big world after all.

Mr. Wheeks showed kindness in other ways, too. I had to walk two miles to and from work each day, and there were times when I showed up late. He would have my mule hitched up for me and ready to go by the time I got there, and he never said a word about my being late.

I made mistakes and did things to earn dozens of whuppings, but Mr. Wheeks never raised a hand to me, or to anybody else. I never heard him curse or call any man a bad name. I heard he even helped his Negro help to buy homes of their own, as well as send their children to school.

One day I heard him telling Mrs. Wheeks someone named Hoover was elected president. I didn’t know what president meant, and I sure never heard of elected.

At settling-up time I cleared a hundred dollars. This was more money than I had dared dream about. That was one Christmas there was plenty of food, pastries, and fresh fruit for everybody. After I bought a hat for myself and a suit of clothes like a dandy, I gave the rest of the money to Margie. When Janey found out I had given money to Margie and not to her, she threw us both out of her house. We were ungrateful and didn’t know nothing about appreciation. Margie found another place for us with the rest of the money, a small one-bedroom shanty on Johnston Street for $22.50 a month.

Janey eventually felt bad for throwing us out. Attempting to make amends, she decided to throw a party at her house for the brothers and sisters. She invited our brothers Johnny, Leroy, and Harvey, their wives and children, Margie, her children, me, and lastly, my father.

Who?

“I said our daddy, he comin to the party.”

I could hear the thump of my heart in my deaf ear, and my tongue became thick at the thought of seeing that man again. Deeply printed in my mind was my last sight of him—driving away in the buggy, money in his hand, leaving me in the dirt of Sam Beal’s driveway. I could still see Pearl jumping in the dirt, shouting at him, “You evil man! Selling you own chillren!” Oh Pearl, my Pearl—her miserable death when she was only fourteen. I tell you, my father was one person I never wanted to see again as long as I lived.

The day of the party arrived. Except for my brief meeting with Johnny, I didn’t know my brothers at all. They told me that we had another sister named Ada, who was the oldest, but she was working in Roanoke, Virginia. I was shocked to learn I was the tenth of eleven children my mama gave birth to.

When they brought my father in, I wouldn’t look at him. Janey took me by the arm and pulled me over to him. “Dad,” she said in a flat voice, “this here be your son Robert.”

“Who?”

“Your son Robert. You remember.”

He stared at me for a few seconds and then said in a timid voice, “Hello, Robert.”

I cringed and couldn’t reply. He looked at the floor and said, “I wouldn’t a knowed ye.”

I couldn’t answer.

“Yup,” he said, “you growed up.”

The years had taken a heavy toll on him. He was bent, tired, grey, and much thinner than I remembered him. His blue-black skin was furrowed with deep lines, his tall body no longer proud.

I stared at him sitting there on the chair holding a glass of lemonade in his hand like he was having just another friendly chat with a stranger. The years of bitterness and despair in the life of a forsaken little boy hit me all at once. I prayed silently for the Lord to help me. I felt like I was five years old again.

He didn’t say anything, just sat there nodding his head and saying, “Yup.”

Finally I managed, “How’s Rosie?”

He set the glass of lemonade down. “We ain’t been together for the las ten years. She quit me.”

Did he expect a response from me? I turned away from him. I had nothing more to say.

“Robert,” he called after me, “I don’t blame ye for hating me. I been sorry for what I done since the day I done it.”

I didn’t think I heard him right. It was my deaf ear he spoke at.

Janey was all dressed up that day. She wore her hair pulled back and greased sleek. She had high cheekbones and enormous eyes, brightly painted lips, and a long, slender body wearing a shiny black satin dress. Margie was beautiful in a different way. She was plump with nappy hair, and the dress she wore was white and pink cotton. Her beauty was the kind that made you want to know her and be with her, and she made you feel warm and happy inside.

My brother Leroy, who owned a farm near the Beal Plantation, told me how Sam Beal had come to his house with his Ku Klux friends looking for me after I escaped.

“They come across the field when my beans was up about like that and my peas up like that. They come across the field at night, and they come up the road by day. They come a-lookin for yoll, Robert. I told him you wasn’t at my place, and I didn’t know where you was nohow. That Sam Beal always feared you’d run away, and he also feared that yor daddy would come and take yoll back. Thought you’d come running to my house, but I didn’t even know yoll.”

I listened with grave interest. “When did the plantation go down?” Leroy gnawed on a chicken neck, spitting out the small knots of bones as he talked. “He jes plain lost everything. Oh, that place is cursed, cursed, I’m tellin you. God is a just God!”

“But what happened to all the slaves? Where did they all go?”

“Oh, I see some of em around—right here in Anderson. You’ll find em shor nuff, they’s here and they’s there. . . .”

Big Mac never made it to freedom, I thought. But how about Miss Ceily? The Edwards family? Miss Harriet? Jed? Leroy said he thought they all were in Anderson except Jed. “Ah think he went up north.”

I noticed that my brothers and sisters didn’t have much to do with our father either. They hardly spoke to him or paid him any attention. He struggled to get out of his chair and nobody offered to help him, and when he spoke, nobody paid any particular attention. Margie was the only one who showed him any courtesy.

“They hates him for sellin his chillren as slaves,” Margie explained later.

“Well, you the one he sold, girl. How come you be the one who treats him so nice?”

Margie gave me a sad look. “He done paid for what he done, Robert. He’ll always be payin for it, and I don’t reckon I need to punish him anymore.”

“God is a just God,” I said. Margie smiled.

———

In the autumn of 1928 Margie’s baby, Walter, took sick. She called the doctor, but he didn’t give us much hope. Said there was some poison in his kidneys spreading through his little body. I remembered how Mother Shepherd prayed over people who were sick, and they would be healed. I did the same. I held little Walter in my arms and asked the Lord to heal him. In fact, as the days wore on, I begged the Lord to heal him. His face grew more and more sickly. Margie cried her heart out every day caring for him. It seemed the world just stopped during those days. We took turns sitting up nights with him, and even Janey came and helped out. He grew worse, and finally, around the first part of November, he died.

The weeks after little Walter died were heartbreaking and dark. Even though I knew the Lord had a good purpose for taking little Walter home to be with Him instead of healing him like we asked, we grieved over it.

I joined the Zion Temple Holiness Church located at the end of Fant Street in December and began going to the meetings regular. Margie never came along with me and told me right out, “I am not one of them who goes for religion, Robert.” So I began to pray for her. The meetings were just what I needed to ease my troubles. The job on Mr. Wheeks’s farm was over, little Walter was dead, Margie was stuck in sorrowfulness, and I didn’t have enough money for pastries and candy.

Finally one day Margie came with me to the little church, and as the people were praying and singing, Margie began to cry. She went up to the tarrying bench and gave her heart to the Lord that night and she never took it back.

One of the first prayers I heard her pray was “Lord, I jes want to say I’m not angry no more for you takin my baby home to heaven. I been actin selfish and mean, and I ain’t gonna act thataway no more.” And she meant what she said.

I finally got me a job in the winter of 1929 at the Calhoun Hotel in Anderson washing pots and pans in the kitchen. I bought the first raincoat I had ever owned when I received my first pay, and you’d think I’d just bought the hotel.

“Can’t get near yoll in that coat!” Margie laughed.

One night when I came home from working at the hotel, Margie met me outside on the dirt road. “Robert,” she said anxiously, “Dad is inside.”

“What you talkin about?”

“Dad. That’s what I’m saying. Dad. He’s inside and he’s—he’s come to live with us.”

“Girl, you lost yor mind?”

“No, I hasn’t. None of his children would take him, Robert. He don’t have no place else to go, ’cept here with us.”

A chill gripped me and spread through my chest. I looked at my sister, bewildered.

“I jes don’t think I can live with that man, Margie.” I felt Ella’s smooth cheek next to mine. We were huddled underneath the house clinging to each other as Father heaved a blow at Mama. I heard Mama fall to the floor, Ella wet herself, and I cried out loud.

“Robert,” Margie pleaded, “what else can we do?”

“I tries not to hate him,” I said lamely. “But I hates him.”

“God will have to help us, thas all, Robert. We ain’t got no choice. Only the Lord can give us love for the man.”

“Love—? Love? What you talkin about, girl? Love!”

My father moved in with us, and the first month was terrible for me. I avoided him as much as I could and never spoke to him. When I had to address him, I called him Jim.

“Don’t call me Jim, son,” he told me one morning as I was buttoning my raincoat, preparing to go to the hotel. “Don’t call me Jim no more. I is yor father.”

I whirled around. “You are not my father!” I snapped. “Sam Beal is my father!”

Stomping out of the little wooden shack and up the dirt road to the hotel, I grew more and more angry. I fussed all day over it. He had some nerve telling me to call him Father! By the time I got home, I had built myself up for a real storm.

He was sitting on the porch waiting for me. Before I could say a word, he said quietly, “Sam Beal is dead, son. He died three months ago.”

The words were like a blow to my stomach. I looked at the old man’s crumpled face. He was bent over in the wooden chair like a folded rag.

“I know it’s too late, Robert,” he said in a cracked voice, “but I’s sorry for what I done—I’s sorry for what I done—” His shoulders trembled, and wonder of wonders, I felt a tinge of compassion for him.

“How much did you get for me, Jim?” I asked in an unsteady voice.

“No,” protested the old man. “Don’t ask me that, Robert. Please—”

“I needs to know, Jim. Now you tell me. I’m going to tell folks my story one day, and I wants to know how much I was sold for.”

He began to cry. “Oh, Lor, have mercy!” he cried. “I sold my chillren for eighty-five dollar.”

———

In the summer of 1929 I began to get restless again. I was well liked at church, and I began to spend my hours after work in the church praying and teaching myself to play the piano. I had a big desire to go to school and learn reading and writing. I talked about it to Margie.

“Yes! I believe you should rightly go to school, Robert. I’ll help yoll.”

It was a great day in the morning when Margie took me to the Presbyterian elementary school to enroll me.

“How old are you?” the Negro principal asked.

“I is goin on nineteen, suh.”

“Nineteen years old? And you want to start school now? Why haven’t you attended any school?”

“I been a slave on a plantation outside town most my life, suh.”

“A slave! In this state?”

“Thas right, suh.”

“Robert, that is against the law! It’s—it’s not legal!”

“I know it’s against the law, suh, but I was a slave anyhow. I could take you to the place today.” The man looked like he was turning sick.

I told him of my escape and of my burning desire to go to school to learn how to read and write. He said very little more, but accepted me for fall enrollment. “Thank you, Jesus!” I shouted. I doubt if my feet touched the ground when I walked home that day. I stood on the steps of our unpainted shack on Johnston Street looking at the old man asleep in the chair on the porch. I took a breath and called out, “Dad! I is going to school!”

He stirred, opened one eye and said, “What you say, boy?”

“I said, I is going to school—Dad.”

The old man grinned from ear to ear. “Thas fine, son, thas fine.” The barrier was broken.

———

September came at last and I started school. I was in the first grade and sat in a classroom with six-year-olds. I loved every minute of it and was hardly even aware of how ridiculous I looked.

I was much too big for the desks and had to sit sideways in them. The children giggled at me, but they were never cruel. We got along fine. During recess I threw the ball to the children and played with them.

When we did our arithmetic, Mrs. Garner, the teacher, gave us problems to figure out. One morning she told us that we were going to learn Roman numerals. I was deeply disappointed because I had wanted to learn American ones.

Story time was a favorite time for me. I loved the stories as much as, if not more than, the little children did. One of my favorites was The Little Red Hen.

Summer came and the principal told Margie and me about a boarding school in Seneca that was all black and free. I was better at reading and writing even though I was only reading elementary school books. I applied to get in, thinking they’d never take me, but to my surprise, I got accepted to start in the summer session. This meant I had to leave Margie and live on the school campus.

Before I went away to Seneca Junior College, I asked my dad to go to church with me. He did, and he gave his heart to Jesus. He wept and prayed, and it was the most touching thing you ever did see. I actually was able to tell him, shaking, “Dad, I forgive you.” Only God could have worked that one out.

Janey, too, asked God to forgive her sins and became a believer in Jesus, and I felt God sure did know how to answer prayers. I didn’t want to leave them, but another major part of my life was about to begin in Seneca, South Carolina.

26

“Have a seat, and we’ll have one of the students show you to your room,” said the scrawny, bird-like woman in the school office. I sat timidly by the window. From there I could see the brick dormitories and the three-story brick classroom building that had the dining hall in the basement, along with the log cabin library, and the dirt paths lined with English ivy. The grounds were spotlessly groomed, and the grass looked as though it had been shaved with a straight-edge razor. There were colorful flower beds, oak, ash, and sweetgum trees, and rhododendron grew along the buildings. I sat in the college office with an unfamiliar feeling: excitement about the future.

A young man about my age, thin and slightly built, came through the door. He smiled, “Hello, I’m Bo Brocke. You must be the new student I’m supposed to show around.”

I stood up and smiled back. “Uh-huh.” I introduced myself and he put his hand out to shake mine. It was the first time anyone had ever done that to me. I didn’t know why he held his hand out, but I figured it was to hold mine, so I gave him one of my hands. I would have given him my other hand, or possibly my arm or leg, if he had given me a chance. He shrugged and said, “This way.” I was thankful the Lord had Bo be the first person I met at school. He was soft-spoken and likable, and he looked real nice in his clean shirt and pants, shoes with laces and socks.

Bo showed me to my room and told me about mealtimes and gave me my schedule. “What time do school start?” I asked him.

“Everything is right there on your schedule,” he said, “and lights has to be out at 10:30. They’re very strict about that.” He told me where to report the next day for job duty. My job was to be in the kitchen.

Each of the students worked for four hours every day at the school, and the jobs were rotated at the start of each new quarter. Bo told me his job was cleaning the classroom building. He had only two years of school left, he told me, and then he was going to go on to university. “I’m thinking about being a lawyer,” he said with a hint of pride in his soft voice.

I didn’t know what a lawyer was. “Oh!” I said, nodding my head. “A lawyer! Uh-huh! A lawyer!”

He told me he was going to summer school to try to graduate early.

“The more credits I take, the faster I’ll be in university!”

“Yoll make it, yessuh, yoll got what it takes.”

When he was gone, I looked around my room and sat down on the bed that was assigned to me. The springs creaked and my body sank deep into the center to within inches of the floor. I chuckled. “I can see whey I’ll be sleepin on the floor!” The room was small, with two single beds, two small desks with chairs, and a long chest of drawers along the wall.

It was better than the plantation, better than Cousin Bessie’s, better than the boarding house in Jacksonville, better than Cousin Gertrude’s, better than Cousin Caldojah’s, better than Aunt Julie’s, better than Sister Janey’s and Sister Margie’s—it was better than anything. It was school. At last I was at school.

The summer on campus gave me a chance to get used to the school before the fall came when the place filled with full-time students again. My roommate was gone for the summer, and so I was alone in the room assigned me. The classes weren’t crowded, and I worked out many fears and backward ideas with the help of the instructors.

My speech problem was back, for one thing, and I often got words mixed up. I had never been taught how to say words, and so sometimes I made dreadful mistakes which brought a lot of laughter.

“I don’t care much about classified music,” I said seriously in class one day. “I feel I is standing on a firm soundation singin jes plain music.”

Another time I confided I didn’t know how to “mangle and co-mangle with people.” Mistakes like this were common. I did improve a little, but to this day I have trouble with words.

September came and my roommate arrived. His name was Luke Small, an ironic name because he stood about six feet, four inches tall. When he looked down at you, his shoulders seemed broader, his legs longer, and his long black arms tougher than anyone you’d ever seen. You had to decide whether to pick a fight with him or admire him. I chose to admire him.

Most of the other students at Seneca chose to admire Luke Small too. He was the football hero, the basketball hero, and the dance-floor hero. He had most of the girls crazy about him and most of the guys jealous of him. He hardly even glanced at me when Bo Brocke introduced us. Of all people to have as a roommate! He was slick, sharp, and popular. I was backward, practically illiterate, and fat, and on top of that, I had a speech problem.

If Luke asked me to hand him the talcum powder, I would freeze before the row of bottles and cans on the dresser, not knowing the talcum powder from the toothpaste. I remembered the bottles of pretty-smelling things that Mistress Beal always kept on top of her dresser, but nobody had ever told me the names of them or what any of them were for.

Luke seemed to like me, though, as time went on, and even encouraged me to try out for the football team. I did try out, and I made the team because I was so strong. I played left tackle throughout all my school years at Seneca.

I loved my classes and I loved studying. I had never owned a book before and I loved everything about books. I loved the smell of the paper, I loved the feel of the edges of the pages when you fanned them, I loved the print, the binding, the textures of the covers. At last I was learning how to read and write. Every night before going to bed I got on my knees and thanked Jesus, and every morning before going to my job in the kitchen, I did the same. “And thank you for givin me such a nice roommate as Luke Small, Lord. Please help him, Lord. He need a Savior!”

The whole school would assemble for chapel one hour a week on Wednesday morning, and the dean of students solemnly warned us, “Remember, when you are off this campus, you must conduct yourselves in an orderly manner. Never be caught off campus after dark. Watch yourselves and keep your noses clean. Never tell a white person what to do, don’t act uppity or too smart. Jim Crow is alive, students, and he tacked a poster up on the wall for us to look at and think about. Always have a friend with you when you leave the campus! And again, don’t go out after dark.”

JIM CROW SAYS

1. A Black male is not to offer his hand (to shake hands) with a White male because it implies being socially equal. A Black male is not to offer his hand or any other part of his body to a White woman, because he risks being accused of rape.

2. Under no circumstance is a Black male to offer to light the cigarette of a White female—that gesture implies intimacy.

3. Blacks are not allowed to show affection toward one another in public, especially kissing, because it offends Whites.

4. Blacks are introduced to Whites, never Whites to Blacks. For example: “Mr. Peters (the White person), this is Charlie (the Black person), that I spoke to you about.”

5. Whites do not use courtesy titles of respect when referring to Blacks, for example, Mr., Mrs., Miss, Sir, or Ma’am. Instead, Blacks are called by their first names. Blacks use courtesy titles when referring to Whites, and are not allowed to call them by their first names.

6. If a Black person rides in a car driven by a White person, the Black person sits in the back seat, or the back of a truck.

7. White motorists have the right-of-way at all intersections.

Rules for Blacks When Speaking to Whites:

1. Never assert or even intimate that a White person is lying.

2. Never impute dishonorable intentions to a White person.

3. Never suggest that a White person is from an inferior class.

4. Never lay claim to, or overly demonstrate, superior knowledge or intelligence.

5. Never curse a White person.

6. Never laugh derisively at a White person.

7. Never comment upon the appearance of a White female.[1]

The boy beside me sneered, “Yeah, Whitey is jes waitin for one of us to stick our black necks in his noose! They hates this school. They hates it because they don’t think niggers got any brains for learning.” I nodded and quietly said to myself, “I’ve come this far. . . . I’ve come this far.”

Football was the big thing during the fall quarter. Being on the team and being a friend of Small’s, the girls hung around me, too. With my schoolwork, football, and new social life, I hardly had time to sleep.

The football coach was a short, stocky man named Rufus McGovern. He was also a preacher, but he wasn’t the Lord’s preacher.

Rufus loved to party. He could really whoop it up. He influenced many a boy in the ways of sin and ruin.

Sometimes Rufus would be so drunk after partying on a Saturday night, we’d think he’d never make it to his pulpit in the A.M.E. Church on Sunday morning, but he never missed a service. Many a Saturday night when we weren’t supposed to be out, the boys carried Rufus to his door, their last glimpse of him being his rubbery body sliding into a heap on the floor inside his door. But on Sunday morning at 11:00 sharp he’d be standing behind that pulpit, with his wife playing the organ right beside him.

It bothered many of the boys in school. They didn’t mind his partying, but they sure hated hypocrisy.

Luke Small had at least four girlfriends all the time, with four more waiting in line. It was still hard for me to be around girls, or to know how to act around anybody, for that matter. I remembered Buck Moore telling me, “Jes watch me,” and where his partying got him, but I wanted to fit in. I discovered that I really liked people and so it wasn’t so painful learning how to get along.

Small received big packages of food, clothing, and personal items every week from his home in Bellaire, Ohio. He never told me who was sending them. I received packages from home, too. Every now and then Margie sent me delicious pound cakes filled with walnuts, along with stick candy and new clothes that she had sewn for me. I knew how dearly she must have paid to make a fancy pound cake for me—and to sew me clothes. I earnestly prayed that the Lord would make me a blessing to her and her boy, Alan, and that one day I’d be able to repay her for all she was doing for me.

Several months after I had arrived at school, I received a letter addressed in a childlike scrawl. I opened it carefully.

Dear Robet

Holy greeetin in Jesus name amen. We are well and hop the same to you. I writing this myself. I thank the lord is so wounderful he has did so meany things for me. I will be glad to see you when the day com. Close with love.

MARgIE

I could hardly believe my eyes. Margie had written a letter! Now where did that girl learn how to write? It was a puzzlement to me. I read the letter again and again, often with tears in my eyes. Had she known all along how to read and write?

Bo Brocke wasn’t on the football team, being small and skinny, and it seemed he was always studying. There wasn’t really anybody as intent on his future as Bo was. I admired him for his dedication. I wanted to be like him. We would have long talks, and he would tell me of his vision to help black people. “When they’s trouble, they’s all kinds of law on the side of the white man and none for the black man. Did you read that poster the Dean put up? Somebody should tear it down. Nobody represents the black man when he’s in front of the judge. I’m gonna be that one, yessuh. I’m gonna be a lawyer, Robert.”

I respected Bo more than any other boy on campus, and we became good friends. I was in his room one night when a couple of the guys came by to tell us about a party off campus that night.

“It sound like it gonna be a real nice party,” they told us. Bo wasn’t interested. “I’ve got to study,” he said, “and I really don’t want to go to no party. Especially off campus.” I didn’t want to go to the party either, but the guys convinced both Bo and me that we were dandies if we didn’t go with them.

At 9:00 Bo and I were outside the dorm, sneaking down the path to the road.

______________

[1].  Stetson Kennedy, Jim Crow Guide: The Way It Was (Boca Raton, FL: Atlantic University Press, 1959/1990), 216–217.

27

When we were past the gate of the school, we were met by a gang of boys from school. Standing in the middle of the boys was Rufus McGovern. Was this his idea? Something inside me told me to stay away from that party.

“I’m not going to no party,” I told Rufus. “I’m jes not risky tonight.” But before I knew what was happening, I was being pushed along with the rest of the boys, and we were all running down the side of the road toward the woods. We ran through the trees in the dark, stumbling over brush and undergrowth and branches.

Finally, winded and breathless, we stopped and Rufus pulled out a quart jug of moonshine. The boys cheered, and they began to pass the jug around, each boy taking a swig. There were probably about ten of us. Small was there, too. The jug came to me, and I took a pull. So did Bo. We looked at each other uncomfortably. The jug went around once more and then Rufus told us to follow him.

“Now, ain’t nobody gonna see us if we stay in the woods here and outa sight. Jes foller me.”

We followed him, a little less fearful because of the moonshine pickling our brains. Some of the boys were talking loud, and it made me nervous. They were laughing and joking, glad to be out and having a little fun. We stopped after a while, and Rufus pulled out the jug once more. This time we all sat down in the trees and drank. A couple of other boys pulled out bottles, too.

I don’t know who heard them first, but the first words I heard were “There’s somethin going on in them trees!” We all scrambled to our feet as car lights aimed at the woods.

“Niggers?”

“Gawd, there must be a hundred!”

“Call for help!”

I heard running and then other voices. Apparently, a pair of young lovers had been in the woods, too, and they saw us and panicked. Before we knew it, there were flashlights beamed on us and more headlights coming toward us from the road.

“There they are! See em?”

“This ain’t nigger territory!”

“No, it ain’t! They’s comin fuh trouble!”

“Help! Help! Oh my Gawd, do something!”

Rufus shouted for us to run. We tore through those woods like a bunch of rats, keeping our eyes on Rufus. None of us knew where we were going except Rufus. We ran so hard, we were gasping and choking for air. I was afraid my lungs would explode. I tried to locate Bo as I ran, but I didn’t see him anywhere. We reached the street, and Rufus led the way to a little house with a fence around it. “Here! Here! In here!” The boys charged toward the house, leaping the fence. There were sirens in the distance. I still couldn’t see Bo. Oh, Lord, help us. We just wanted to have a good time. I turned, trying to find Bo. I ran back toward the woods to find him. “Bo!” I called, “Bo! Where are you, man?”

I heard the voices coming closer. Oh, Lord, where is Bo? “Bo! Bo!” I ran into the thicket, straining to see in the dark. If those white men caught Bo, there’s no telling what they might do. “Bo!”

“I heard one of em, Mike!” a voice called.

“You! Stop! We heard you!”

I fell to my stomach in the thicket. I was too close to them to make a run for it. I hoped Bo was hiding somewhere, too. When they got past us, we could make a run for that house.

Then a siren became louder, and there were more voices. A car pulled up to the edge of the woods, its lights beamed across the top of my head. Oh, Lord, the place is crawling with white men!

“Whey’d they go, Mike?”

“I heard one of em!”

“Hey! Look! Over there! They’re runnin around Lily Spotter’s house!”

“There they are!”

“My God they’re tryin to git in Lily Spotter’s house!”

“That whore’d love to git herself a nigger!”

“She’s bringin the niggers over here now!”

A woman’s voice cried, “My God, none of us’ll be safe!”

Someone asked, “Did you bring your gun?”

“Damn right I did! We’ll show them!”

“Bill’s got his gun! I got mine, too!”

“Them nigger bastards think they kin take our wimmin and git away with it!”

“Hey! Mike! There’s about a hundred of ’em! Call the sheriff!”

“Call the marshall!”

“There they go!”

Gunfire split the air. Voices screaming and shouting followed. I heard running and then, “Wait! Hey! We got one! We got one!”

Somebody ran across the thicket where I was hiding and nearly stepped on my head. There was struggling. More feet running.

“We got one, Mike! Here’s one!”

I heard a terrified cry. “Noo! I ain’t done nothin!”

Dear Lord, they got Bo.

“What we gonna do with im?”

“Hang the bastard!” a woman screamed.

“You after some white wimmin tonight, boy? Izzat what you after?”

“No! No!”

I heard the smack of a fist and something tumble to the ground. Then I heard blow after blow being laid on Bo.

“I’m innocent. You can’t hang me til you prove I’m guilty!”

“Oh can’t we, boy? You tellin us what we can do? Izzat right? Tell us about how you come over here to git some of that nice white lovin!”

“No! I didn’t even know where we were goin—”

“We, boy? Who’s we?”

“Yoll better speak, boy, or we’ll tear yor arms off!”

“Who’re yor friends, boy?”

“Speak!”

“He ain’t talkin. OK, Jim, git his arms.”

“Break his legs!”

“String the nigger up!”

“A woman ain’t safe in her own home nohow!”

“Talk, nigger! Who’re yor friends?”

“He ain’t gonna talk!”

“That’s yor las chance, nigger. Break his arms, Jim!” I heard scrambling and struggling.

“I got a crowbar in my trunk!”

“Well, git it, dammit!”

“Damn! We wastin our time here. Them others is getting away.”

Footsteps came running. “Here’s the crowbar!”

Crack! Bo screamed. Crack! He screamed again, and then I heard him squealing and tumbling through the leaves.

“Hey! They’re getting away! Leave him and git over there to Lily’s place! Surround the place!”

There was more commotion, more gunfire, more screaming.

“Don’t lettum git away! They gittin away! Damn! They got away!”

“Well, they’s gonna be a burnin tonight! We’ll show them to stay away from our wimmin!”

“Oh, God, what’s this world coming to?”

They were so close to me I could smell their breath. I had to get to Bo and get him out of there.

“Mike, Lily ain’t home! The house is locked up and nobody home!”

“Locked from the outside?”

“Yeah!”

Bo was rolling in the grass with car lights fixed on him. I crawled toward him afraid to make a sound. If I could reach him, we could make a run for it.

“What yoll say we hang the one we caught?”

“Hang ’im! Hang the nigger!”

I made a lunge for Bo, grabbed him by the shoulders and pulled him out of the car’s headlights. “Come on, man. We gotta run!”

“I’m innocent!” he spit out.

“Never mind no innocent, run!”

“I cain’t . . . my leg’s broke.”

At that instant I saw Big Mac and the poking iron come down on him and me standing by looking dumb and doing nothing. I hurled Bo on my back and took off. “I’m innocent . . .” he kept murmuring.

“Shut up, fool, they’ll hear you!”

I ran as hard as I could through the brush and tangled weeds. I was pushing the plow, carrying water, hauling wood, clearing fields of rock. I was hearing the lash and Mitt and Waxy getting the bottoms of their feet tore up. I was racing Thrasher’s horse like we was racing from hell itself.

“Where’d he go?”

Pheee-ak!

“Don’t be shootin at nothin! After him!”

“Mary! Did you see that? Thet nigger done vanished!”

Their voices grew farther and farther away as I pushed into the woods with Bo on my back. I had no idea where I was going or how to get back to the campus. If I had paid attention in the quarter when Miz Ceily read the stars I might know which way to go. She always knew north from south and east from west. Me, I just knew how to run.

I would have made it if I hadn’t tripped and went crashing to the ground. I held Bo, who was either passed out or dead. There was a big gash in his head and his eyes were rolled up in their sockets. I saw what it was I tripped on. Rufus McGovern’s empty whiskey jug. Okay, maybe I could get my bearings and figure out how to get back, but when I tried to stand up, my left foot caved in on me.

Then I heard them coming. I hid Bo under a thicket and covered him with leaves. “Don’t move, Bo,” I whispered, and made a dive for the trees on one foot. I slipped and slid down a ditch on my back. I saw the lights of their American Eveready flashlights. I heard one of them trip over something soft. And then they carried Bo off.

28

I lay motionless in the ditch until the sounds were gone. I knew it would be senseless to try to make a break for it. There were bound to be people out all night searching for the rest of us. The whole town was probably alerted. Those fool white people must have thought it was a Negro uprising, an insurrection, maybe the return of John Brown. Didn’t they know all we wanted was to be human beings? Poor Bo, poor Bo. He hadn’t even wanted to go out tonight.

I didn’t crawl out of the ditch until the sky was beginning to turn pale yellow in the early morning. The birds were chirping in the distance, just as if nothing was wrong. I could hardly move, my body had been cramped for so long. There was no feeling in my right foot and my left foot pained. I crawled on my knees up the sandy ledge and over into a grassy patch near a tree. I limped all the way back through the trees to where they caught Bo. Slowly, with an icy shudder, I lifted my eyes up.

There he was, right where they had left him. Not even swaying, just hanging there—still. Still. He was soaked red with blood, and beneath where he hung was a big puddle of dark red. I was stunned and sickened. I thought I’d throw up or pass out.

Lord, I’ve got to get him down. How to do that, Lord? I staggered to the tree, my legs and feet tingling with feeling coming back. I tried to climb the tree but I couldn’t do it; the tree was too wide, and I couldn’t catch hold. Frantically I looked for something to stand on. There was nothing. Just trees. Oh Lord, I can’t leave him hanging here like this! I hopped back and forth crying and looking for some way to cut him down. When I heard the purr of a car engine, I stopped in my tracks. A car was cruising slowly along the edge of the woods. They were still patrolling for us, a bunch of stupid boys.

I didn’t know which way to run, but I knew I had to get away from the road. I had to leave Bo hanging there. I hobbled into the trees praying I’d find my way back to the school. I pushed ahead until I could go no more. The morning sun pierced through the trees, and the darkness lifted. I cut in a diagonal in order to avoid the edges of the woods where I might come out in a white neighborhood and tried to aim in the direction I thought we had come. I stopped to wipe my face and catch my breath. Yes, this is the spot. Here’s where I stood, and there is where Rufus was—Bo was right here next to me . . . Oh Lord, Bo.

Now I was pretty sure I knew the way back. When I saw the school on top of the hill, I clamored to the road and climbed the hill.

Inside the dorm, I was met by one of the students rushing to his first-hour class. “Man!” he whistled. “You musta had some time las night. You better hurry, loverboy, cause you is gonna be late for class!”

I found the dorm counselor, and, weeping, I told him what had happened and how they had hung Bo. He was shocked and ran out of the office in a rage.

Within an hour three members of the faculty drove to where Bo was, with police consent, and they cut him down. They brought his body back to the school until his mama came to claim it. She came the next day, a thin little lady wearing round glasses and a flowered hat. I wanted to say something to her, tell her how her son had died a hero.

The funeral was held in the church Bo had attended as a boy. His mama looked at me with tragic eyes, her thin, stiff face struggling to remain calm. “Son,” she said quietly, “did you see my boy die?”

“Well, Ma’am, I was there, but I couldn’t see—”

“Did he pray before—before—”

“Ma’am,” I answered quickly, “the Lord was there, Ma’am, with his arms around Bo. I know. Because God is a just God.”

She wept softly.

“Ma’am . . .” I stammered, “I want yoll to know . . . he didn’t get on his knees for them. And he wouldn’t give the names of his friends . . .”

She blinked back the tears. “Well, ain’t that somethin? I always knowed he was a lot on the brave side. . . .”

Life at the school after Bo’s death became very difficult for everybody. The students were not allowed off campus even for five minutes, and we knew we were in danger. Nothing was done about Bo’s murder, in spite of the protests and influence of the faculty. There was talk of Rufus getting an award for shepherding the rest of the boys back safely after they had deliberately disobeyed rules.

His lady friend, Lily Spotter, had decided not to have a party after all, but went to a movie instead. Rufus seemed more upset about her not being home than he was over Bo’s death. “You live and die,” he said. “Bo was a good man, but it’s the livin we got to think about. It’s the livin who count in this world, not the dead.”

When Christmas vacation came, I stayed at the school and worked doing maintenance for some extra money, which I sent home to Margie. My ankle healed up without any doctor’s help. I withdrew into myself after Bo’s hanging and became dedicated to my classwork and job. I think somewhere inside me I wanted to take Bo’s place and finish what he had dreamed of doing.

When spring break came, I got a job off campus painting houses, and I rented a room two blocks away from school where it was safe in the home of a widow lady named Mrs. Black. She was about eighty years old, wore her teeth only on Sunday, and believed shoes were a sin to your toes. She cooked my meals for me, and every night when I came home after work, she’d be waiting by the window for me.

September of 1931 was as busy as the fall quarter the year before. Small was my roommate again, and we would talk on into the night about sports and girls. I was still recovering from Bo’s death.

It was right before Christmas vacation when another incident happened that alarmed the school. There had been some more murmurings around town that some black man had raped a white woman. Whenever a rumor like that was started, every black family had to be extremely cautious. One of the first-year students got careless, however. On a sunny Monday afternoon, whistling and singing as he walked back to the campus after running an errand, a car stopped beside him on the road. There were three white men inside. “Hey, boy! Can we give you a lift?” The unsuspecting student thanked them and got into the car.

The men drove him to a garage some distance away and castrated him. Then they drove him outside of town and dumped him at the side of the road. A black farmer found him later that day and took him to the hospital in Walhalla. He was in critical condition for several weeks and never came back to school again. We learned later that he committed suicide.

I went back to Anderson for Christmas vacation that year. Margie and her son, Alan, treated me with so much loving care that for two weeks I forgot my troubles. In the evening I read the Bible out loud as we sat around the wood-burning stove in the center of the room.

“You know, Robert,” Margie told me, smiling, “Jesus make it all worthwhile.”

“Yes, He do,” I said in a quiet voice.

“God is a good God, Robert.”

I took her hand and stroked it. “Margie, you know, being at school is—well, it’s givin me more than book learnin. And one thing I know is that the Lord can carry a man through anything. He gives the mind to take the bad as well as the good—you understand what I’m talkin about?”

“I understand, chile, I surely do.”

“And sometimes the bad is—really bad. . . .”

“That’s the God hepp me truth.”

———

Back at school I was making some new discoveries. For instance, I discovered that a black man named George Washington Carver made hundreds of things out of peanuts and became very famous, and even the president came to visit him. He wasn’t interested in profit from most of his products. He freely shared his discoveries, sayin, “God gave the inventions to me. How can I sell them to someone else?” I learned that he changed the South from being a one-crop land of cotton to being full of multi-crop farmlands, with farmers having hundreds of uses for their new crops. He made dyes of 500 different shades and just a few years earlier, in 1927, he invented a process for making paints and stains from soybeans. How come they say the Negro ain’t smart?

I also learned more about the man named Frederick Douglass, who was born as a slave and became one of the greatest orators in the country, holding political offices and speaking internationally against slavery. I especially loved to read about abolitionists like Sojourner Truth and Frederick Douglass. They had been slaves, too, and devoted their lives to putting an end to slavery and injustice. Mr. Douglass taught that whites and blacks should have equal rights and work together side by side. I learned about another black man named Matthew Henson who went to the North Pole with Commander Peary, and Robert Smalls, who had been a slave in South Carolina and became a representative from the state to the U.S. Congress.

Then there was Booker T. Washington, who had been born a slave and had hungered to go to school, the same as me. He worked hard to get his learning, and he founded the world-famous Tuskegee Institute in Alabama. He taught that black people should stick together, work hard, and improve themselves by education and effort before trying to integrate with white people. He organized the National Business League.

All this new information made my head swim. I had been taught that Negroes had no souls, that we were born only to serve the white man. Now I was learning about these early black history makers and world leaders.

I was beginning to break loose from the prejudice and hatred against us that had formed my thinking and attitudes as a child. For the first time in my life I was seeing my people with hope—not only in our own camp, but in the world. I was learning that maybe I could be and do anything—even be a lawyer like Bo Brocke wanted to be.

It had been seven years since I’d escaped from slavery.

I did not talk about my years on the plantation or tell people that I had been a slave. I was ashamed of it. To tell my schoolmates that I had been a slave would have been unthinkable.

29

In November of 1932 Franklin Delano Roosevelt was elected president. I knew a little more now about presidents, but not much more about elections.

I dedicated myself to studying that year. I spent every spare minute reading and practicing my writing.

In the spring I went to visit Mrs. Black. I found her in a field near her house picking dandelion greens. She smiled her broad, toothless grin when she saw me. “Robert! Ah declare!” We went back to her house, and she put the greens on to boil with a hunk of salt pork, and then she dipped the yellow tops in batter and deep-fried them. With warm corn bread from the oven and cold buttermilk, I smacked my lips with every bite. “Robert,” she asked me after we had eaten, “how much room do the Lord have in yor life?” I nearly fell from my chair when she asked me that.

“Hunh?”

“Give Him room, son, give Him room.”

“Well, I—”

“You gots thet worried look about ye, and they ain’t no good to worryin. That’s what we got a Lord fer so He can do the worryin.”

When it began to grow dark, I kissed her good-bye and headed back to the school.

“Yoll come back, and we’ll pick us some poke salad!”

I did go back, at least once a week, until the month before summer break in 1933. Mrs. Black was like tonic on a wound. I could hardly wait to get an outside job and rent a room at her house again.

It was a hot afternoon when I walked up the road to her little wood-frame house on the hill a month later. I felt good, and I was glad the hot weather was here again and glad for the chance to work and make some money to send home to Margie. I looked forward to the quiet evenings with Mrs. Black, her good cooking, and her warm, loving friendship.

I mounted the wooden steps and noticed the door was bolted and the curtains drawn across the windows. I knocked and waited for the sound of her bare feet padding along the linoleum floor. There was no answer. I knocked again. When there was no answer I went around to the back. The back door was shut tight with a padlock nailed on the outside. I never knew her to lock anything. I picked up my grip and went back around to the front to wait. Maybe she was visiting.

I had waited for over an hour when a heavyset colored woman carrying some packages in her arms came puffing up the hill. She looked up at me and called, “You waitin on Miz Black?”

“Yes, Ma’am.”

“Honey, she done died.” I sucked in my breath and my throat tightened. “They found her las week in that house. She had been dead for almost a month and nobody knew it. You a kin o’ hers?”

“—Uh—a kin? No . . .”

“Well, they didn’t have no funeral on account o’ she didn’t have no kin and nobody to give her one, so they took her out and buried her. I see they ain’t boarded the place up yit. Well, they oughta. People gonna break in there and—”

The woman stood by the steps and talked for what seemed like forever. I hardly heard a word she said.

Finally I interrupted. “How did they find her?”

“Insurance man come by. Insurance man knocked on the door and smelled somethin terrible. He peek in and there she was—on the kitchen floor. Half-rotten, they say. Insurance man never did get his money.”

I rose to my feet and picked up my grip. “Ain’t that a shame?” the woman continued. “No kin to cash in that insurance money or to get this house—”

I walked for hours, around in circles I think, unaware of the beautiful summer day. Sometime in the late afternoon I came to the familiar clearing where the neighborhood variety store was. It had a gas pump outside, and inside was a little bit of everything, including groceries, dry goods, and a counter where food was served. I opened the screen door and went inside. Met by the lazy drone of a fan and a “Hiyoll” from the Negro lady behind the counter, I sat down on a stool, took a deep breath, and ordered pie.

30

I spent the summer of 1933 painting houses and doing handyman jobs around town. I rented a room from a family three blocks from campus. I was able to save over fifty dollars, which I put in an envelope and took home to Anderson for Margie at the end of the summer.

It was wonderful to see Margie again. She seemed more worn and tired than the last time I had seen her but her spirit was high. I asked her how she learned to write. She told me that after I went off to school, she had prayed and asked the Lord to make it possible for her to learn how to read and write, too.

“Chile, it wasn’t two days later but they was a knock on the door and a lady standin there tellin me about free classes in readin and writin jes two blocks yonder. I thought she was a white angel. You think they’s any white angels, Robert? Hee! Hee! Praise the Lord!”

The vacation ended all too soon, and before I knew it I was getting ready to catch the bus back to Seneca. Margie watched me pull the strap closed on my grip. “Honey,” she said with a shaky voice, “yoll take care of yoself and don’t get into any trouble, hear?” From the look on her face, I knew she meant more than what she had said.

“Now what you tryin to tell me, girl?” I asked.

Margie’s chin quivered. “And another thing, don’t forgit me.”

“Hunh?”

“Now thassall. Gimme a kiss.”

Sitting on the bus with the dry, pungent smells of upholstery and cigar smoke, I thought of Margie’s face. Even though she was tough, fearless, and strong as an ox, her thirty-one years seemed more like sixty. She acted like maybe I was never coming back. I leaned my head against the window. Only dying could keep me from her, I thought. And Lord, I sure didn’t want to die yet.

———

Back at school, I found a new interest in extracurricular activities. Luke Small was a big influence on me. “I’m fed up with this place,” he would grumble. “I’s leavin this here place.” I didn’t pay any attention to him at first, but as the weeks went by, I found myself agreeing with him. “Yeah,” I grumbled along with him, “this place is strifling.”

Late night hours and a poor attitude caused me to get behind in my schoolwork. Soon I began cutting classes and piling up unexcused absences.

In late October, after I had been at school for more than three years, I was coming from the small log cabin library and walking toward the men’s dorm when Small came running from across the lawn toward me.

“Sadler,” he said with a large grin, “you and me is leavin this here place tomorrow.”

“Hunh?”

“Thas right, man. We is leavin.”

“What you mean—we?”

“You and me, brother. You and me. We is hoppin the ole freight and goin on to Ohio!”

“O-Ohio?”

“We’ll hobo to my house in Bellaire. Howzat sound?”

“Well—I—”

I thought of Margie and the money she had worked overtime to send to me so I could get an education, and the promise I made to myself to honor Bo’s memory. “Uh, I donno—”

Before I had a chance to say anything more, Luke Small was waving and jitterbugging down the path toward the dining hall.

That afternoon, instead of doing my studying, I left the campus and walked along the dirt path which led through the wooded area onto the winding dirt road I knew well. Tiny houses and shanties were scattered along the edge of the road, and I walked slowly, kicking pebbles and looking at the shacks. How many of the blacks in those houses can read? I wondered. How many of them can write numbers and figure out if they are being cheated or not on their groceries or their rent receipts?

I could read and write pretty well now, and I was proud of my book learning. If I stayed at Seneca, I could graduate and go on to college. Maybe even be a lawyer—somebody to help my people.

A little black child about three years old ran to the edge of the road. “Hi,” I called. She gave me a shy smile. I looked beyond her to her mother hanging wash on the line. Wearing an old cotton dress, wet with perspiration, barefoot, her hair covered in a rag, she paused for a second to look at me and then continued her work.

She lived over here in a shack, sweating and struggling to make enough food for her family, and I lived over there across the road up in the big school being educated so someday I wouldn’t have to live like her. And maybe if I made it through I’d be able to do something so others wouldn’t have to live like her either.

But the love of learning was wearing off, and I was becoming critical and restless. Oh Lord, what’ll I do?

When I arrived back at school later that afternoon, I was met by the dorm counselor. “Sadler,” he said, taking me by the shoulder, “you already been on probation once; you ain’t going to get much mercy if you keep skipping classes.”

“Oh . . . yeah . . .”

“By the way, how you doing in your classes?”

“I uh—OK, I guess. Jes fine.”

“In other words, you’re failing.”

“Yessuh.”

“Man, Sadler, you gonna get yourself the title of First Man of the Year to Be Expelled.”

I sucked in my breath. Expelled! Out of the corner of my eye I saw Small leave the building. I left the dorm counselor standing there shaking his head and chased after Small.

“Small! Listen, Small, you still fixin to leave tomorrow?”

“Sure enough.”

“OK, it’s a deal.”

He smiled, pulling his shoulders back. “OK, Sadler. I’ll tell you when.”

I went back to my room and began packing my things. I could still hear the voice of the dorm counselor, “First Man of the Year to Be Expelled.” I had no choice. I had to leave before they kicked me out.

When I had a few belongings packed in boxes, Small insisted we send it to his house in Bellaire, Ohio. “Why your place?” I asked him.

“Cause that’s where we goin!”

I didn’t like the idea, but we carried the boxes to the post office, addressed to his house in Bellaire. I paid for the postage because Small had no money.

We carried nothing with us—no change of clothes, no hair brush, nothing. By the time we got to the railroad tracks that night, I was so scared my knees trembled. Small started educating me on how to hitch a train.

“When you grabs on, you throws your body out like this here,” he told me. “You got to be careful, but once you gits holt of that handhold and you swings your feets on up on the rung, you’re OK. Got it?”

“Small, I never done this before. What if—”

“Listen! Here she come! Now watch how I do it, and then you grab on right after me! Git ready!”

The train was moving slowly out of the station toward us. We would jump on just before it picked up speed. My Lord! I didn’t realize how loud a train could be up close! Jesus, help me! The wheels were like death, powerful crashing steel against the rails. There went Small! I saw his body fly out exactly as he had told me, then his knees curled under him, and he was safe on the metal ladder. Here it came. The swaying boxcars rumbled past, loud as howling wolves. I took to running alongside, grabbed the cold metal handhold, and threw my body out like Small had instructed, hanging on with all my strength. When I felt my feet underneath me on the rung and the cool night air whipping at my face, I knew I had made it. I was leaving the solid South and on my way to Ohio.

Small crawled along the top of the car to me, and we rode in the blind. “This here is the passenger train,” he shouted. “We’ll take it to Atlanta, Georgie, and then we’ll take a freight!”

I nodded without knowing what he was talking about. “Then we take the freight to Knoxville! We gets into a coal car and covers ourselves with coal. That way the cops won’t find us.”

“Cops?”

“Sure. These trains is loaded with them. Each stop they inspect the cars, lookin for hobos.”

When the train began to slow down, Small explained that we were stopping for water. “Now listen, hang on right where you is until you see a cop comin. When you see the cop, cross over to the other side of the car and hang on till he pass. That way he won’t catch you.”

I didn’t know what he meant. When the train stopped, I hopped down and landed smack into a cop. Before I could say anything or do anything, he grabbed me.

“That’s far enough, bub!”

“But I got to get on the train,” I tried to explain, as if he were listening. The train pulled out without me, and the cop ordered me to git or he’d put me behind bars. I watched the train rumble into the distance, and when its sounds were gone I crossed the tracks and began walking in the silent countryside. I didn’t have any idea where I was so I followed the tracks hoping another train would come along before the day was up. When it grew dark, I slept in the weeds with the crickets. I awoke when I heard the whistle of a train. It was going north so I knew I had to get on it.

Remembering Small’s instructions, I ran alongside the cars, but they were going a lot faster than the other time. Groaning, I grabbed the handhold, threw my body out and hung on for dear life. Finally, I got my legs under me, and my feet touched the rungs of the ladder. I had made it. I climbed up to the top of the ladder and got on the roof of the boxcar and sat down. I didn’t know what was shaking more—me or the train. After a while, though, I began to feel pretty good up there, and I began to sing and clap as the train clacked along. It wasn’t long before I heard someone shout and, startled, I looked down into a white man’s face. “Hey you!” he called. “Git offa the roof!”

I must have looked horrified because the man shouted, “I ain’t no cop!”

He waved his arms at me. “Git offa the roof!” He beckoned me down and I crawled onto the ladder on the side of the car and made my way to the empty coal car in front of us.

“Look!” the man pointed. We were entering a tunnel. I would have been killed if I had been sitting on the roof. There was no headroom. “Got a rag or somethin?” the mysterious man asked. “Yeah,” I answered, pulling a handkerchief Margie had sent me from my pocket. “Cover your face. You’ll strangle to death in the smoke if you don’t.”

At Atlanta I jumped out of the coal car and my new friend pointed out the next train I needed to hop. “It’ll take you to Knoxville. From there, catch the train to Cincinnati. Then you’re on your own.” I was grateful to him, but before I got a chance to thank him, he was gone.

I made it to Knoxville—cold, exhausted, dirty, and hungry, and without a penny to my name.

I got confused at the train yard and couldn’t find the train to Cincinnati. I walked up and down the tracks ducking behind cars every time I saw someone coming. It soon became clear to me that I wasn’t going to find the train to Cincinnati, and there was nothing to do but find something to eat and somewhere to sleep in Knoxville.

Tumble-down shacks and heaps of old junk spread along the train yard edge. I looked beyond at the Smoky Mountains in the distance, beautiful and blue in the grey sky. The downtown district was hilly with narrow streets and low buildings. As I climbed and dipped with the hills, I could see church spires reaching upward behind the hills and along the building tops. I found a small park and stretched out on the grass. It was two weeks before I got back to the train yard.

Panhandling, bumming, cooking outside over an open fire, sleeping on the grass in the park until the police kicked me out, and then dropping to sleep in doorways, back alleys, and empty lots was the way I spent those two weeks.

Then one rainy afternoon I met a fuzzy-faced old hobo huddled under a tree in the park. We got to talking. “Yeah-suh,” he drawled, “ah reckon ah’m goin’ to take me a trip to Cincie.”

I was overjoyed. “If yoll wouldn’t be mindin, I’d like to tarry along with yoll.” We headed for the train yard in the rain and hopped the right train with no trouble. The ride was smooth going all the way. I slept that night in some wet weeds on a bank of the Ohio River and the next morning hopped the freight to Bellaire.

When I arrived in Bellaire, I didn’t know where to go to find Small, but I did remember he lived on Noble Street, where we sent our boxes. That was all I knew. I began to walk. I asked directions from several people, and I wearied myself trying to figure them out. “Lord, show me the place,” I prayed. Finally, I found myself standing in front of a two-story brick house with tall hedges around it. I stared up at it. This was Noble Street. I might as well start here. I walked up the stairs and rang the bell. A middle-aged, brown-skinned woman, grey hair smoothed into two buns on either side of her face, answered.

“Afternoon, Ma’am, I’m coming from Seneca Junior College, and I’m a friend of Luke Small—”

“A friend of Luke’s!” the woman exclaimed. “Come in! Come in!” The Lord had answered my prayer. The woman took my arm and ushered me into a small, cozy living room. “Nancy! Come on in here.” A young, pretty woman hurried into the room, her eyes wide, a little smile on her lips.

“How is Luke? Is he with you?” the older woman asked.

I stared back dumbly. “He ain’t here yet? We left school together nearly three weeks ago. I lost him before we got to Atlanta.”

A little boy about three years old bounced into the hallway and stood grinning at me from the door. The older woman smiled. “This is Eddie,” she said. “Luke’s son. Eddie will be so happy to see his daddy again.” Then, indicating the young woman, she said, “This is Nancy, Luke’s wife. I’m sure Luke has told you all about her.” Then laughing she added, “And I’m Luke’s mother.”

I stared at Luke’s wife, my mouth hanging open dumbly. “I’m uh—Robert. Robert Sadler, Ma’am.”

Luke, you dog!

They fluttered around me asking questions about their Luke, and I just kept staring at his lovely little wife in amazement. Small’s son pulled at my pant leg and grinned up at me, wanting to play.

Luke Small, you dog!

I thought for sure Small would arrive any time, so I stayed in their home sitting in the bathtub scrubbing myself and eating their food for a whole week, but he didn’t show up. When I heard they were hiring in Dayton, I said good-bye to Small’s family and hopped a freight. I got a job there as a sandwich man in a country club. I kept in touch with Small’s mother, who was a sweet and kind lady, and month after month rolled by without any word from her son. Finally, after six months had gone by, Small arrived home. I never did get a chance to see him. I wrote him to keep the stuff in my box.

The job at the country club lasted about seven months. I would have stayed longer if it hadn’t been so lonely for me. I had a room at the club and had to spend most of my time there with hardly anyone to talk to. The most exciting thing that happened in those months was when the Ringling Bros. Circus came to town. I walked into Dayton every night to see it. I loved the circus so much that I tried to get a job with them. There were no openings, but that didn’t discourage me. I’d wait. The days went by and still no openings. Finally it was time for the circus to move on to Detroit, and I hadn’t gotten a job with them yet. I was so enamored of Ringling Bros., I left the country club and followed them to Detroit. I hoboed on the same train.

There was another hobo on the train with me, a white man from New York who told me he was a barber. He had all of his tools in a bag alongside him. I was very impressed and would probably have asked him for a haircut once we got to Detroit if three robbers hadn’t jumped into the car with us. They stole everything from us they could. They took all his barber’s tools, and though I didn’t have much money, they took what I had. So I arrived in Detroit without a change of clothes, a penny to my name, or a haircut.

31

It was hot and the busy, noisy, crowded streets of Detroit were strange and frightening to me. This was up north now, and black people walked on the same side of the street with white people. They weren’t in love with each other, but they walked next to each other, sat next to each other, and talked with each other. There were black and white bums in the park, too. They ate together, panhandled together, robbed together, and slept in the same park together under their respective newspaper coverings.

I arrived in Detroit in August of 1934, the year Hitler became führer of Germany. The Depression had hit America, and jobs and money were hard to come by. Ringling Bros. didn’t need any more men, and so I had no choice but to sleep in the park and panhandle. I slept and hung around downtown in Grand Circus Park, a round little park with fountains, several statues, flower beds, and ten streets fanning out from it. There were so many people who stayed in that park that we called it the Grand Circus Hotel. Whole families slept on the benches and on the grass. It wasn’t a safe place by any means. Night after night I heard screams for help. A person got used to it.

I learned how to beware and watch out for danger. I had to be careful which alley I entered because a person could get beat up and killed for as little as twenty-five cents or a pair of shoes.

Living in this hopelessness and seeing nothing but hunger and desperate people everywhere, the worst happened and I started drinking. At first it was just because there was nothing else to do. It wasn’t many weeks before I was stealing to pay for my wine, just like the others. I stayed drunk much of the time and some nights I landed in the jail on Gratiot Street.

I am thankful that I never mugged anybody—and nobody ever mugged me. Those days in the city of Detroit were some of the loneliest of my life. I would walk the streets of downtown along Randolph to Cadillac Square, and I’d stand and stare at the City Hall Building with its tower reaching for the sky. I’d sit and look at the massive, looming Penobscot Building and the J. L. Hudson Building. I’d walk south of Michigan Avenue to the heart of the business center and I’d panhandle. I walked north of Michigan Avenue on either side of Woodward Avenue and panhandled where the shopper traffic was. I was falling fast and far from the Lord and everything sweet and lovely.

Nearly every day I went to one of the missions for a free bowl of soup. I had to sit through the meetings before I could get the soup, and I sat there with my head lowered, ashamed of myself and ashamed to look up. The white men and women in the missions were kind, and they seemed to genuinely care about the men who came there. When October and the cold weather began, I slept in the mission.

It seemed like there were hundreds of us panhandling and looking for a handout. The streets were lined with bums and derelicts. I looked and acted no different than the rest of them. At night in the mission meetings, I struggled not to cry, but the tears would slide down my unshaven, dirty cheeks as shame and self-disgust washed over me.

When I thought it couldn’t get worse, it got worse. A couple of men had an apartment where they ran some gambling and other illegal things. But when they asked if I wanted to live there in exchange for keeping the place clean and acting as a bouncer, I agreed gladly. I was so eager to get off the streets, I didn’t care where I went or what the job was.

It was like moving into the first floor of hell. The parties went on continually all day and all night. I saw things there that I never dreamed people could do—orgies, drunks, dope peddling, prostitution, and all forms of perversion went on in that place. Many nights I never got to bed because someone would be in my bed—often two men or two women.

Those days and nights have blurred together in my mind. The men who rented the apartment bought me new clothes, and I had a fancy cigarette case and lighter, a big, shiny ring on my finger, and polished shoes, and I grew a mustache. At the age of twenty-three, I was caught in a terrible trap, but I was fed, clothed, and too scared and dumb to get out.

One day when I was running an errand for my bosses, I stopped at a bar and ballroom nearby and discovered they needed a janitor. I begged the manager for the job and, surprisingly, got it. That night I sneaked out of the apartment and moved into a room in the house of a widow lady and her young, pretty niece, a college student. One look at her and I fell hard. Turned out she fell for me, too.

I was glad to be out of the apartment and away from the gambling and the parties, but my life didn’t change much. Every cent I made went for liquor and foolishness. I stopped paying rent because the landlady had hopes I’d marry her niece, and she treated me like I was already her son.

I wrote a letter to Margie and begged her to come to Detroit. I hoped that if Margie came to Detroit, we could get a place together and I’d get my life straightened out. I told her that wages were better and how good things were up north.

In 1935 I managed to get a job on the WPA. I had to stand in line from midnight until 9:00 the next morning to get in. That’s how it was. When I got to the front of the line they handed me a pick and shovel.

Lord, I didn’t want to work with a pick and shovel! I had seen enough pick and shovel on the plantation. I could hear Thrasher’s whip whistling through the air as we dug a ground so cold and hard that our hands bled. I went to work though—by day with a pick and shovel, and in the early morning hours cleaning at the bar and ballroom.

One day the foreman at WPA asked if any of us men were interested in learning cement finishing. I jumped at the chance to get rid of the pick and shovel. Soon I was working as a cement finisher, putting curbs in streets and driveways and earning ten dollars a day. I wrote to Margie again, begging her to come to Detroit.

Margie finally answered me and said she couldn’t come and leave Dad, who was down sick. But she said Janey was making plans to come to Detroit.

Janey arrived all smiles and done up pretty, toting a lot of boxes and grips. She rented herself a house, which she later bought. She moved me into it with her, and then she moved some man in to pay her bills. Not only did she take this man for every dime he had, she used him to start a little business of her own. Her house became a house of prostitution and gambling. Again I was right in the middle of it all. I forgot all about the widow lady’s pretty niece and started working on a gambling habit. It became a passion, and as Janey’s brother I had my pick of the girls.

Janey was very pretty and had a way with men. She could win any man she set out to get, and once she won him, she was boss. She gave the orders, and he would hand over the paychecks to her.

I wanted to ask Janey what happened to her relationship to Jesus. I wanted to say, “You supposed to be a Christian, how come you runnin a bad house?” But how could I jump on her with accusations when I was just as guilty as she? It was the blind leading the blind—blind Janey leading blind me.

The months went by. I forgot all about Jesus. I was Janey’s right-hand man. I hustled business for her, sold her liquor, ran a gambling table, roughed up anyone who wouldn’t pay up, and kept a close eye over the whole operation. We pulled in more money than either one of us had ever imagined. It wasn’t long before Janey bought a newer and bigger house. Her prices went up and so did the class of girls she had working for her. They were college girls, and they wore fur coats. They were white-skinned and black-skinned, although most of our customers were white. White men rarely asked for white girls.

I fell in love with one of the girls. I had dropped the widow’s niece when I moved in with Janey, and Monica came into my life.

“Let’s get married,” Monica would plead.

“Girl, you crazy.”

We would fight and she’d accuse me of not loving her. We raged and ranted and broke things, and many times someone else would have to come and break up our fights. Janey was afraid we’d bring the police down on us.

One Sunday night when I was dealing cards at one of the tables, Monica told me she had a headache and went upstairs to lie down. Later that night she still wasn’t feeling any better, and I thought she was just faking it to get me to give her attention. She was that way. A couple of hours later one of the girls came down and told me I should take Monica to the hospital because she was acting peculiar. I was annoyed, said I wasn’t going to no hospital. “Let her take herself,” which she did.

On Monday I broke down and went to see her. She said she felt much better and her stomachache and headache were almost gone. She was taking antinausea pills and pain killers and she looked pale. Her eyes didn’t look right. I figured a good rest was what she needed. “Robert, let’s not fight no more,” she said.

“No more fighting,” I agreed. “No more.” When I went back to see her later, she was dead. She had suffered a brain hemorrhage; an artery had burst in her brain causing bleeding. By the time they got to her she was gone.

I will never forget standing in that hospital room holding a bunch of flowers in my hand and staring at that empty bed. The sheets were pulled off, and the grey and white stripes of the mattress stared back at me where just yesterday a young, beautiful girl had lain waiting for her health to return.

Something broke in me as I stood there staring at that empty bed. It was as though my life spilled out of me onto the hospital floor. I saw the trap I was in, the hopelessness, and the tragedy of it. Monica was gone. She’d never have another chance for a better life. I stood there trembling, not knowing which way to turn. Then in the silence there came a voice. It was a powerful voice, distant and yet near.

“Robert,” the soft, gentle voice called, “will you not come to me now before it is too late?”

It was a sound as though all the oceans and seas of the world were locked inside it, and all hope and promise were sealed in those words.

I got down to my knees right there in the hospital room and begged the Lord to forgive me and take me back. After weeping and praying for a while I laid the flowers on the empty bed and left.

I didn’t go back to Janey’s that night. I walked the streets crying, feeling bad for Monica, and begging God to have mercy on me.

When I finally returned to Janey’s I locked myself in my room, refusing to eat or drink. Janey knew I was crying over Monica so she left me alone. I wanted Jesus to take me back, and I was afraid I had gotten too far away to get back to Him. It was terrible. I worried whether Monica was in heaven or hell. Where was I headed?

The following Sunday I found a church nearby. I went up to the altar and the preacher asked me what I wanted. “I want you to pray for me,” I said with tears streaming down my face. He pointed to a side door and instructed me to go through it, and the elders would get me ready to be baptized.

“I don’t want to be baptized, I want to be prayed for,” I said. The preacher sent me into the side room anyway, and there I was met by three stern-faced elders who handed me a robe to put on in order to get baptized.

“I am not going in that water a dry devil and come out a wet one!” I insisted, but they wouldn’t hear of it. They wanted me to join the church. “I don’t want to join your church; I want somebody to pray for me! I’m a sinner and a backslider, and I want to get right with God!” They didn’t seem to know what I was talking about, and so I left there, frustrated and defeated.

I went back to Janey’s, but I couldn’t sleep. I kept seeing Monica’s pale face and hearing her ask if we could quit fighting. The following Sunday I found a little storefront church with its door open so I walked in and sat down on a folding chair in the back. A young man was standing up near the altar praying, but there was nobody else there. He didn’t know I had come in.

I sat quietly for a few moments, but then the young man’s praying began to fill up the room. He was facing the front wall so he couldn’t see me. He had his arms up in the air. As he prayed, I suddenly began to shake. I fell right off the chair and lay prostrate on the floor. When I looked up, there were about a half-dozen people praying over me. The young man had his hand on my forehead, and he was praying and weeping over me.

They helped me back onto the chair, and I tried to tell them what had happened and why I was there. “I know why you’re here,” the young man said. “You’re here because you’ve strayed a long way from the Lord, but now you want to come back to Him.” I looked at him, amazed. “How did you know?”

He smiled at me. “The Holy Spirit told me you were coming, so I got here early to pray for you.”

32

It wasn’t easy to return to Janey’s that afternoon. She was asleep and I woke her up.

“Jay,” I said in a firm voice, “I’m not selling any more whiskey for you, I’m not bringing any more men in for you, and I’m not gambling, drinking, or carousing any more. I’m finished. Don’t you ask me to do a dirty thing again.”

She sat up in bed, looked at me calmly and said, “OK, Robert.” Just like that.

“I went to church today and I’m going to be leading a new life from now on,” I told her. “The Lord has given me another chance.”

Janey yawned and blinked her eyes. “OK, Robert,” she said, and she fell back asleep.

I moved out of the house that afternoon. I didn’t even take a change of clothing. I had only about eighty cents in my pocket and no place to go, but I didn’t care. I was happy.

I walked down the street thanking Jesus out loud. I laughed and cried at the same time, and people looked at me as though I were crazy.

That evening I went back to the little storefront church. The same young man who had prayed for me was there. We prayed together and talked for a long time—in fact, almost all night.

“You know, I don’t even know your name,” I said. He looked at me and laughed. “My name is Robert, too. Robert Jones.”

Then he looked at me with an odd expression on his face. “Robert . . . Robert Sadler. I knew your name was familiar. And your face surely looks familiar. I do know ye!”

“Hunh?”

“I was livin in Seneca yonder across the road from the school where you was a student. My mama took me to the same church you went to every week.”

“Lord, have mercy.”

“I remember you played left tackle on the football team!”

“Do you remember that?”

“The coach, Rufus McGovern, is livin real quiet now. In fact, he’s repented of his ways.”

“Repented. Wal, if that ain’t a miracle.”

I got a job as a caretaker in an apartment building on Harding Street a couple of days later. There was a restaurant near the little storefront church and I became friendly with the proprietor, a balding old man with silver fuzz at his ears. He had a heavy middle-aged girlfriend named Cora who sat at the counter drinking Coca-Cola in the afternoons. She was a sweet lady and loved people. The day she first spotted me she had her eye on me for her niece who lived in Cincinnati.

“I want you to write to my niece,” she’d tell me. At first I thought she was joking. “Where your niece is?” I asked.

“She’s in Cincie and she’s a fine girl. She is your type of girl.”

I finally wrote to her and she answered me. We began corresponding regularly. Her name was Jacqueline Brown Graham.

One day I bought a train ticket to Cincinnati to meet Jacqueline. I walked up the steps to the nicely kept house she lived in with her parents, my heart in my throat. I couldn’t figure out why I was nervous. I had been out with plenty of women.

Jacqueline answered the door. She was very pretty—tall and elegant-looking in a grey crepe dress with ruffles on the sleeves and the neck; she had long black hair brushed up on the top of her head in a roll. There was a gentle smile on her face.

I fell in love with Jacqueline and we were married on June 28, 1939. It was a small wedding attended by Robert Jones, Janey, Jackie’s Aunt Cora, and the Baptist preacher who married us.

Jackie was a good churchgoer. She was clean, good, and lived an honest life without smoking, drinking, or swearing, but she didn’t know the Lord. I prayed for her every day, asking the Lord to touch her and come into her heart. It took nine years.

We moved into the upstairs apartment of a beautiful home at 99 King Street in Detroit. It was the home of a doctor and his wife. Jacqueline worked for the doctor during the day doing general housekeeping, and I worked at a hotel off Woodward near a Catholic church, shining shoes. Then Jackie and I started a little business together doing cooking and catering for the Detroit Association of Women’s Clubs. Jacqueline was an excellent cook and she taught me how to make fancy pastries and delicacies.

But no work lasted forever, and I came upon a streak of jobs from caretaking to gardening, and in 1941 I went to school to learn machine operating. After I graduated, I got a job at Ford Motors. We had few financial worries in those days. I made a good living and Jackie and I were happy.

I often took the streetcar downtown to Grand Circus Park to preach about the love of God. Many gave their hearts to Him. I also held a Bible class in our home for young people every Saturday night.

My speech had gotten much better and I wasn’t afraid to talk about the Lord. Jackie wouldn’t give her heart to the Lord, and she rarely accompanied me to church. She lived a more exemplary life than many people who called themselves Christians, and she didn’t think she needed “more religion” or a personal relationship with the Lord.

She occasionally attended a Methodist church near the house. “They’re quiet and reverent,” she’d tell me. “Not like your church. Everyone hollering and making so much noise praising the Lord and all, it’s plain distracting.”

“Honey, the Bible don’t tell us we have to be quiet when we worship the Lord.”

“Well, I don’t like all that noise no way.”

She was a good wife in every respect, and we rarely argued. I didn’t want to ruin the love we had for each another by arguing and fussing with her.

Though I didn’t argue with Jackie, that doesn’t mean that I didn’t argue with God. “God, you got to save my wife! Lord, save her! Oh, God, save Jackie!” I begged, pleaded, moaned, groaned. I made promises and sacrificed, I fasted and did everything I could think of to impress God with the seriousness of my request. The years rolled by, and Jackie remained as cold as ever to the Gospel.

I wanted Jackie to know Jesus the way I did. If only she would love Him and trust her life to Him. I think I wanted this more than anything in the world. Sometimes I got discouraged, and I would get to feeling sorry for myself. We shared everything else in life, and yet this one vital, beautiful thing we didn’t share.

Finally, it occurred to me to stop my begging and complaining to the Lord and to start being grateful for my wife exactly the way she was. I thanked God and humbled myself. I knew God had hand-picked Jackie for me, and I repented for complaining and fussing in my heart.

The Bible study in our home began with six people. It grew into a group of about forty, until finally we couldn’t get any more into the house. Jackie was never in favor of it. She often stayed in the bedroom or downstairs during our meetings. The young people just loved her anyhow and went out of their way to show her kindnesses.

One afternoon at my machine at Ford, I bowed my head and said, “Lord, I’m not fasting anymore for Jackie’s salvation; I’m not begging anymore; I’m not pleading anymore. Lord, you do with her whatever you want to do.”

Jackie surrendered her life to God the next week.

After Bible study at our house on Saturday night, we had gone to bed and while she was sleeping, Jackie had a dream. In her dream she saw a beautiful church. She could hear wonderful music coming from inside, which was so lovely and inviting that she ran up to it to go inside. Standing at the door, however, was a splendid-appearing man who put his hand up as she tried to enter. He asked, “Why are you coming in here?” Jackie said, “Why, I’m a member here.” Then the man, who Jackie said was glorious to behold, asked if her name was written in the “book.” Jackie said, “Oh yes, I’m sure of it. After all, I am a member of the church!” The man took out a great book with pages that seemed to be endless, and he looked for her name. Closing the book at last, he said, “I’m so sorry, but you may not enter. Only those whose names are written in this book belong here.”

She was so frightened when she awoke she didn’t know what to do first. She told me about the dream and asked me to interpret it for her. Then she burst into tears. She already guessed what the dream meant. “Last week,” she wept, “I would have laughed at that dream. For some reason today it’s not funny. O Lord, I’ve been so proud.”

She dressed and left the house before even eating breakfast. I caught a streetcar and arrived in church just before the service began. Taking a seat, I looked up at the altar, and there was Jackie on her knees praying.

33

The Lord allowed me to help several other black people from the South come north to get better jobs. I wrote to Margie regularly asking her to come to Detroit, but she flatly refused to leave Dad, who was old and sick.

Jackie and I were thrilled to be able to help our people who were still trapped in the poverty and bigotry of the South. We were able to send clothing, food, money, and help to those who wanted to come north. The employment manager at General Motors told me that he’d hire as many Blacks from the South as I sent in. I was able to help over thirty men from South Carolina get good jobs in Detroit. It brought back familiar memories as they arrived in Detroit. Illiterate and knowing little more than farming, they were like scared, lost children. Our upstairs apartment was always in use by these friends.

In August of 1945 the war was over and there were headlines in the paper saying that 22,500 blacks had lost war jobs. We trusted the Lord this far to take care of us, and we would continue to trust Him. As in the Depression, the streets were lined with more and more unemployed men and women.

Many colored boys fought in the war and died for their country, but many of those who returned were refused jobs because of the color of their skin.

“My black body was good enough for that U.S. uniform,” one soldier named Bill told me bitterly, “but I better not put it on a stool in a white lunch counter in Alabama! I just gave three years of my life so the white man could keep the war going.”

I had begun to feel a real burden in my heart to serve the Lord in a deeper way. I was restless, uneasy. I sometimes stayed up all night praying and writing in my journal. My job did not satisfy me any longer.

I often went to the train depot to talk about a loving God to the men who inhabited the benches. The cavernous depot, bustling with activity, was filled with people with no place to go. They sat staring at the passersby or sleeping in corners. They were worn out, hungry, and without homes. I sat with them and tried to tell them about a Savior who cared for them, who wanted them to know Him.

In those days after the war ended, there was little money around. One bleak morning I went to work to find that I didn’t have a job anymore. I had been laid off, too. Times got pretty rough for us then, and many days saw us without bread on the table. Jackie and I went across the river to Canada to buy meat. A chicken cost us $4.50. Eggs were 25¢ apiece. We were forced to eat the way I had eaten in my days as a slave—corn bread, grits, salt pork, chitlins.

Somehow I just couldn’t get despondent. I was quite sure now that God was calling me to serve Him as a minister.

If there was any sadness in my heart, it was because of the way the churches were milking the people for money. Some churches were taking as many as five offerings during the service. And the pastors weren’t taking care of their people. Widows who had given money to the church all their lives were going hungry and had nobody looking out for them. I shed many tears over the state of the church as I saw it. It hurt me deeply to see the people so badly neglected.

There was an unused piano downstairs and now without a job I’d go down and try to teach myself to play. I wasn’t exactly popular in the neighborhood, but I had an urge to play music for the Lord.

In 1947 the Lord began to speak to me about leaving Detroit. I didn’t know how I was going to tell Jackie. She had long ago decorated our place with nice furniture, and she was proud of the fine things we owned and the fine home we had.

I was worried about my lack of education, and I wasn’t sure if I was capable of serving the Lord as a minister. One afternoon when I was painting a neighbor’s garage, a sudden terrible pain threw me to the ground. The pain was so awful I couldn’t move. I was taken to the hospital and the doctors said it was a sprained back and they put me in traction. Then one afternoon when I was alone in the room, I felt the Lord’s presence and He began to talk to me. He said, “Why don’t you want to do what I have asked you to do?”

He continued, “I will give you the words to speak and the works to work. I will direct your way.”

I decided there in that hospital bed to place all my lacks in Jesus’ hands. The reverence I had for education, credentials, and personal talents was His, too. If the Lord could use this poor, half-deaf man with a speech problem who wasn’t too smart, that was His business, not mine.

Jackie came to see me that evening and I told her, “I’m healed. I’m going home tomorrow morning.” She thought I was crazy. But the next morning when the doctors came around, they examined me and said, “We can’t figure it out, but there’s nothing wrong with you.” I was taken out of traction. The inflammation and pain were completely gone, and the doctors told me I was well and could go home.

A few days later we went to Lima, Ohio, to a revival meeting. Some sisters were talking after the meeting, and I overheard them mention a place called Bucyrus, Ohio. The name of that town kept going over and over in my mind. I could hardly sleep that night.

Back in Detroit, I told Jackie not to wait up for me and I went to the ticket office in the bus depot and bought a ticket to Bucyrus, Ohio.

I got off the bus at the square in the small town of Bucyrus. It was a cold afternoon, and the wind was blowing down the quiet, clean main street of the town. I saw no black faces. As I walked around, I noticed many shops selling something called bratwurst. I went into a sandwich shop on Sandusky Street and ordered bratwurst and coffee. I discovered it was a delicious German sausage. The people in the restaurant stared at me strangely. I wondered if they had ever seen a black man before. By nightfall I was back on the bus heading for Detroit.

There was certainly nothing momentous about the trip. In fact, there was not a thing special about it. Maybe I had expected God to open the earth or appear in the treetops, or maybe I had expected a welcoming committee of holy angels. By the end of the day I think I would have settled for a friendly hello from any old stranger. There were no signs from God, however, and no indications of any kind that the Lord even knew I was there. Still, I felt this was the town He wanted us to move to.

“Jackie, sit down, honey.” The house was quiet, and outside in the darkness of the night there was a light snowfall spreading across the city. Jackie wrapped her bathrobe around her and sat down at the kitchen table. I poured hot coffee and smiled at her. She had a look on her face that said, “OK, what’s the bad news?”

“We’re leavin Detroit,” I said. “I believe we’ll be movin to Bucyrus, Ohio.”

Jackie was still for a moment. “Robert Sadler, whey your mind is?”

34

In February of 1947 I left Detroit for Bucyrus, Ohio. I rented a room, had a telephone put in, and took out an ad in the newspaper to clean carpets and upholstery. I received so many calls I could hardly handle the work. In three months’ time Jackie was able to join me.

I tried to get a job as a machinist but I was always turned down, even though I was qualified and had plenty of experience. One day a white man and I were in the employment office at Swan Rubber. We got to talking and discovered we were both applying for machinist work. When I went in for the interview the personnel manager told me the jobs were filled and there were none left. The white man who went in after me got the job and was told they were still hiring.

I tried to get a job at Timken Ball Bearing when they advertised for men, but when I applied they said there were no jobs. The same happened at Ohio Crane. The only jobs I could get were cleaning toilets or pushing a broom. Finally I got my gumption up and carried myself to the office of the vice president at Swan Rubber. I told him I needed a job and I gave him my qualifications. I told him if they was hiring whites, they must have openings. The vice president sat in his big chair listening to me and then he went to the personnel office and insisted they hire me at the plant.

I stayed on that job and years later a new white personnel manager was hired at Swan Rubber and he was sympathetic toward Blacks. He told me that he would hire any Negro I sent to him. I traveled to the neighboring towns of Crestline, Marion, Fostoria, Wyandot, Galion, Mansfield, and Tiffin with the news, and the man kept his word and hired the men I sent.

———

We stayed in Bucyrus for four years and in August of 1951 we packed the car with our belongings and moved to Clemson, South Carolina.

I got a job as a baker in the kitchen of Clemson College, even though I didn’t know a lot about baking. Jackie worked in the college laundry.

Jackie and I loved children and we had none of our own. We began a children’s Bible class and thirty children came every week to these meetings. Then we were invited to have a children’s radio program, so each week we brought a group of children to the radio station for our program. We sang mostly, and Jackie told a Bible story in her sweet, gentle voice.

Jackie wanted the Lord to help her be a blessing to others and she complained to me one morning before going to her job, “Honey, I’d sure like to lead someone to the Lord. Seem like I just never get the opportunity.” You see, Jackie and I knew that the only way to live a life worthwhile or in any way with hope and dignity was to have a deep relationship with God. I nearly died without Him, and Jackie’s good and decent life was without the fire of love. What I called love before I gave my life to God was more like need.

———

That morning at the laundry Jackie was praying with a lady friend and she prayed for people who were lost without God. A man was walking by the laundry door and he heard her praying. He began to cry. Minutes later, he walked into the laundry and turned his life over to the Lord.

I took Jackie to nearby Anderson for a visit. This was the last time I saw my father. He died a few months later.

Buck and Corrie Moore were living in Anderson, not far from Margie. They lived in a run-down shack just like everybody else in the neighborhood. There was an arbor of ivy over their walk leading to the broken wooden steps, and along it grew honeysuckle and roses. I couldn’t wait to see them again. I ran into Buck’s arms, and we rocked, embraced, and carried on, promising we’d never lose touch again.

Things in Anderson were not good. Many of our people couldn’t get jobs. The good jobs went to the white men, and the Negroes had to take the lowest and dirtiest jobs for the least pay. Many black men worked two and three jobs just to put enough food on the table.

Very upsetting to me was the number of cults that black people were trapped in. Charlatans who professed to be God, or God’s “prophet,” were exploiting the people. One such man was Daddy Grace. They even worshiped his picture and forked over their money to his cult in hopes of receiving his blessing. Witchcraft, voodoo, and Satanism were very dominant among the black people of the South. Sound Bible teaching was needed because the devils behind the cults kept people in bondage, kept them sick, poor, and miserable.

I wanted so much to help my people. I cried out to God night and day for them. I wasn’t afraid of the white man. I refused to bow and say, “Yes, Cap’n. No, Cap’n.” But many of the people in Anderson were still doing it. They didn’t know they were supposed to be free.

Someday, Lord, I prayed, I’ll see black people and white people living together and worshiping a wise and good God as His children. Someday I’ll see us sharing the world and respecting each other. Someday, Lord, there’ll be an end to the wars in men’s hearts. . . . Oh, someday, someday, Lord, it won’t be like this no more.

35

“Do you love me, Robert?”

“Yes, Lord!”

“Will you help my people, Robert?”

“Yes, Lord!”

“Will you feed the poor, clothe the naked, comfort the mourning—?”

“Yes, yes, Lord!”

“Will you go without food? Without a place to sleep? Will you be content with want as well as abundance?”

“Oh, I will, Lord!”

“Will you trust me?”

“Yes, yes, I’ll trust you, Lord!”

“Robert, go. Minister in my name. I am with you.”

It was many hours before I stumbled out of the living room that afternoon in Clemson. I had been praying, asking God to use me in a greater way, and God had spoken to me. I knew in the deepest part of me that He had called me as a minister even with no education and no formal training. I had a big love in my heart and soul for Him and I was willing to do anything and go anywhere for Him.

I was forty-one years old, and it was nearing Christmastime of 1952. I was laid off at the bakery and looking for work again. I strolled along the Clemson College campus, passed Tillman Hall with its big clock tower, and I prayed to the Lord. Here I is, out of work again, Lord. Where shall I go? Where shall I go? I met one of the men who worked with me in the bakery, and we walked together under the broad arms of the oak and white cedar trees. He told me they were hiring in Birmingham, Alabama. I went home, packed a grip, kissed Jackie good-bye, and drove to Birmingham, singing “Thank you, Jesus” all the way.

I got a job working on the railroad on a tie gang, and when that ended I found work painting houses. One day coming home from work, I saw two scrubby little boys standing at the edge of the road. They were dirty, needed haircuts, and wore shoes without socks or laces.

The Spirit of the Lord spoke to me and told me to talk to them. “Why don’t you put some laces in those shoes?” I asked them.

“Because we don’t got no money,” they told me. I took them to the store and bought them some shoelaces and told them to ask their father if I could give them a haircut.

That night the pastor of the church I was attending told me to stay away from this family. “The father is an evil man,” he said. “He hates preachers, and he’ll stick a knife to you just as soon as look at you.”

“Well, praise the Lord,” I said. “I’m going over there first thing tomorrow.”

And I did. “I’m a minister of the Lord,” I announced when a surly looking black man opened the door. “I’m the one who bought your boys shoelaces.” He said nothing. “I told them to tell you that I’d like to cut their hair.” I smiled at him. “For free.”

He stepped back, squinting, and said, “Come on in.” I walked into a dark, cluttered room with beer cans, dirty clothes, papers, dishes, and toys piled everywhere. He closed the door behind us.

“You a minister, hunh?” I nodded, still smiling. “Hold it right there then. Before you cut my boys’ hair . . .”

My heart began to pump faster. What was he going to do? He had the most evil look about him.

“Before you cut their hair, would you—would you—?” He fidgeted and lowered his eyes. “Would you—pray for me?”

If my jaw fell and my eyes bugged out, the man didn’t seem to mind. “Of course I’ll pray for you,” I said.

I didn’t cut just one boy’s hair, I cut the hair of everyone in the family. That family bowed their heads and let me pray for them. I explained how Jesus loved each of them and wanted to give them strength and wisdom and an overcoming life. They each prayed and gave their hearts to the Lord that afternoon. Later I stayed and helped the mother clean the living room and wash the dishes. We had a song and prayer meeting there that lasted most of the night.

I stayed in Birmingham a couple of months, and then when work ran out, I went back home. Jackie and I had a couple of weeks together, and news came that there was work in Asheville, North Carolina. I packed my grip and traveled to Asheville.

The only work I could find in Asheville was shining shoes in a hotel. In a couple of weeks I found extra work doing gardening, painting houses, and then digging ditches. I knew that God was fully aware of my situation; He saw that I couldn’t get skilled work even though I was qualified. He saw me shining shoes hundreds of miles away from home in order to be a man and support my wife. Nothing escaped His eye.

I knew that I would be of no use to the Lord if I allowed myself to be bitter. “I trust you, Lord; I know you’re with me.” I told myself to start being grateful and to enjoy the hilly, beautiful town and its people.

I stayed in Asheville a couple of months, and then the Lord told me to return to Bucyrus. Happily driving along the highway, I could see the Paris Mountains, splendid and dusty in the distance, and I saw glassy lakes, streams, lush forests, and rolling hills.

The wisdom of the Lord in placing us in northern Ohio was geographically perfect and a blessing to us and to my ministry. I arrived in time to receive a job offer that would allow me the freedom to travel and minister.

The job for us in Bucyrus was on a large farm just outside of town. We were provided with a little house to live in and a small salary for cleaning the big house, keeping the yard, and doing general handyman jobs. We stayed there until 1955.

I started getting calls to come minister in town and in other towns nearby, and even some far away. The Lord usually sent me to small groups—home meetings, struggling churches, hospitals, and prisons. Many times He would send me several miles away for just one or two people who were in need. I ministered to as many white folk as black folk.

Often while working in the yard or painting a house I would hear the Spirit of the Lord tell to me to go somewhere or to help someone in need. I would try to get alone as soon as possible so I could pray, be quiet, and wait on Him for direction. Many times I had to wait for a day or two. I fasted, prayed, and read the Bible, listening for Him to tell me where He wanted me to go. Then when I knew He had spoken, I would prepare to leave.

In 1954 I was asked to hold some meetings in St. Louis and Potosi, Missouri. The Lord had blessed me with a portable pump organ, and I took it with me to Missouri.

Not far from Potosi there is a small town of about 300 people called Mineral Point. A handful of people were attending a tiny, run-down church with no pastor, and they asked me to come minister to them. They told me they didn’t have any money to pay me. I said, “I don’t want your money. I just want to help you.”

The first night I ministered, the people seemed cold and distant. I felt there was a spiritual wall between us. I prayed that night, “Lord, break down that wall. Whatever it takes, Lord, break it down.”

I didn’t know that the Lord was getting ready to do just that.

The next night I went out to my car to go to the meeting. I started the car up and then went back into the house to get my Bible. When I came out, I saw the car rolling down the hill toward a swamp below. Though it was getting dark, I ran stumbling through high weeds and brush, trying to catch up with that car.

I saw it heading for a tree. “Please, Lord, stop it on that tree!” But the car rolled right past the tree. I sure didn’t want it to end up in the swamp—it would be close to impossible to salvage from there. Another tree came in view. I prayed, “Oh, Lord, stop it on that tree,” but the car brushed right past the tree. I was running with all my strength, but I couldn’t get hold of the door. The car plunged into the swamp, and I watched it sink slowly, nose first, until only the back half of the car poked out of the tangle of weeds and mud.

I stood there, out of breath, scratched, my clothes torn, my car gone—and suddenly I began to laugh. A song came to my mind and I began to sing.

I’ll say Amen to Jesus,

Amen all the time,

It’s Amen when in sorrow,

It’s Amen rain or shine. . . .

I stayed by the swamp for about fifteen minutes praising the Lord, laughing, and singing.

An old couple up on a house on the hill saw the whole thing and they saw me laughing and praising the Lord. They were amazed. Word quickly got around that the preacher’s car had gotten wrecked but he was still praising Jesus. That night there were twice as many people in church, and the atmosphere was entirely different. “Brother Sadler’s car is wrecked, and we never saw a happier preacher,” they said. God had broken down the barrier between us and they trusted me.

I stayed there three months holding meetings nearly every night. I worked during the day cleaning up the church building—fixing, building, and painting it—and at night I held meetings. A spirit of trust and genuine caring replaced fear and bitterness. I became pastor of that church and traveled back and forth from Mineral Point to Bucyrus for the next five years.

I was preparing to leave for home after that first long stay in Mineral Point when Jackie called and read a letter that had come for me. It was from a fourteen-year-old girl in Sinking Spring, Pennsylvania.

“Brother Sadler, please come,” it read. “Come here because my father is an alcoholic and he need Jesus bad. Please come and pray for my father.”

The letter touched me, but I didn’t have enough money to get to Pennsylvania. The Lord had been teaching me to trust Him, however, and so I prayed. I felt the Lord’s approval to go to Sinking Spring to see this girl’s father. The insurance company had paid enough money for me to get another car, this time a ’52 Ford, and so I left Mineral Point with no money in my pocket, a tank full of gas, and a thousand miles ahead of me.

I couldn’t take the turnpike without any money because of the tolls, so through the mountains I went. As I drove, suddenly the Holy Spirit spoke to me and said, “Stop here.” I thought I had heard wrong and kept driving. Finally I knew that I had to obey the Holy Spirit. I turned around and went back to the spot He had told me to stop. When I got to the place, He spoke to me again and told me to take out my portable organ and set it up on the side of the road. I shrugged and set it up, even though I wanted to question Him. He spoke again and told me to play. I asked, “What shall I play, Lord?” He told me to play “Softly and Tenderly Jesus Is Calling.”

So there at the side of a mountain, with wilderness all around me, the sun high in the clear blue sky, I began to play. Cars went by, and I saw faces staring at me as though they were seeing things. I must have been a sight playing my pump organ and singing away in the weeds by the woods in the mountains. I didn’t care. I was just lifted up in the Holy Spirit and having a wonderful time. I sang all the verses to “Softly and Tenderly” over and over again. I waited for the Holy Spirit to tell me that was enough, or to sing something else, but I didn’t hear Him, so I kept on playing,

Softly and tenderly Jesus is calling,

Calling for you and for meeee . . .

I could hear the sound of my voice echoing in the mountains. I was sweating in the heat. The sun was high in the sky.

Come home, come home,

Calling O sinner, come hoooome . . .

The heat of the afternoon gave way to a nice breeze, and on I played. The same song, over and over. When evening began to fall, I was starting to get thirsty, but on I played.

Come home, come home,

Ye who are weary, come home;

Earnestly, tenderly, Jesus is calling,

Calling, O sinner, come home!

Hearing something behind me, I thought it was a bear and I played even faster.

Comehome comehome, callingOsinnercomehome!

I turned around and saw a man with a young boy of about nine years. They were staring at me with wonder.

“We came closer so we could hear you,” the man called to me. “We’ve been listening since you started singing.” I hadn’t finished the hymn yet, so I continued singing as the man and boy stood listening.

Come home, come home,

Ye who are weary, come home;

Earnestly, tenderly, Jesus is calling,

Calling, O sinner, come home!

The man’s face was flushed and tears were streaming down his cheeks. Then, through tears, he told me, “I was in the Korean War—overseas. I was in the front lines and I got shot. Bad. They rushed me to the hospital, and then they put me in the death room. I began to pray. I had Christian parents, and I knew they were home praying for me—” His voice broke.

“I made a vow there on my dying bed. ‘Heal me, Lord,’ I prayed. ‘Let me get home to America again, and I promise I’ll change my life and live for you all the days of my life.’” He wiped his face with the back of his hand. “The Lord healed me and brought me home—but I didn’t keep my promise. I’ve been living in these mountains—hiding out—trying to get away from God ever since.

“God sent you here,” he cried. “I can’t stand hearing, ‘Come home, come home, calling, O sinner, come home’ one minute longer!”

I stayed there with the man and his son for several hours. He took me to his cabin, where he fed me pemmican and rice, chokeberries, and hot apple tea. When I left him, he looked like a different man, at peace and restored to God. He told me he felt like he was let out of a cage. He wanted to call his wife and go home.

I got into my car that night praising God. I drove along humming to myself and thanking God for His tender mercies, and after a while I noticed that the fuel gauge was on empty. If the Lord wanted me to get to Pennsylvania, He’d have to take care of that. I was feeling sleepy, so I pulled over to the side of the road and fell asleep.

I woke early in the morning and started out again. The gas gauge still said E for empty. I reached the southern border of Illinois and driving through a small town I noticed a church at the side of the road that looked like a good place to stop for Sunday service. The sight of people streaming into a church was so good that I felt I just had to join them. I pulled over and went inside. The white pastor saw me and came over to give me a nice welcome. Discovering I was a minister, he asked me if I’d like to minister at the evening service. He invited me to Sunday dinner at his house, and what a feast it was. Pork roast, corn on the cob, mashed potatoes and gravy, green beans and bacon, lemon-carrot Jell-O salad, icy glasses of milk, and banana cream pie for dessert.

“Sunday’s our big meal of the week,” the pastor’s wife explained, passing the biscuits. “It’s always nice to gather at the table and enjoy the Lord’s bounty on His day, isn’t that right, children?”

Three yellow-haired children said uh-huh.

That night I sang and played their piano and we carried on long after the service ordinarily ended. They took up a love offering for me, and I counted over one hundred dollars. I praised the Lord all the way to Sinking Spring, Pennsylvania.

The little girl was shocked to see me.

“But wasn’t it you sent me a letter astin me to come pray for your daddy?”

“Yessir, but I just never dreamed you’d actually show up!”

“Well. Here I be. The Lord sent me.”

She threw her arms around my neck and kissed me. “I was afraid you wouldn’t come, Brother Bob, but here you are!” I spent two days with her father, and he refused to see his need for God in his life. The girl’s mother invited some friends to the house, and we held meetings in their home in the evenings. I played my portable organ and sang. At the meetings four and five people came to the Lord each night. All except the father. He sat slumped half asleep against the wall.

I left Sinking Spring wondering exactly why God sent me there when the man I had gone to see wasn’t helped at all. I stopped the car and settled it with the Lord. I gave the situation completely to Him. “I don’t want Sadler’s way, Lord, I want your way.”

———

In 1955, about the time Dr. King led the bus boycott in Montgomery, Alabama, Jackie got a good job as a housekeeper for a family named Pickings in Bucyrus. Mr. Pickings owned a company that made copper kettles. Shortly after Jackie began working for them, Mr. Pickings asked me to work for him too. We moved into the big house next door to his where his brother Wilfred was living. Our job was to care for both houses, the grounds, and Wilfred.

Wilfred was not right in his mind. He had been an opera singer, and some said he had studied too hard and it hurt his brain. He acted like he was fighting demons.

Mr. Pickings hadn’t been able to keep any help in that house because of Wilfred. He scared everybody away. We were the only ones who lasted. In time, we came to love Wilfred. He was an elderly man, big, tall, and fierce when he was angry.

He didn’t frighten us. He obeyed us as a child would his parents. I could tell him, “Wilfred, eat your carrots!” and he would obediently eat his carrots. When he was making too much noise, I would sternly tell him, “That’s enough of that, Wilfred!” and he would be quiet.

Wilfred obeyed Jackie pretty well, and his mind seemed to improve after we moved into the house so I felt at peace when I had to travel, leaving Jackie in charge. The Lord blessed her with wisdom and strength to take over.

———

In 1956 an incident occurred which was to have a lasting effect on my ministry. Jackie and I went to a meeting in Marion, Ohio, and there was a man from Seattle speaking and ministering the word of the Lord in prophecy. The spirit of discernment was working in him that night in tremendous power. The Lord was so near and sweet. I was sitting at the piano when suddenly the man pointed to me and said, “Come up here, brother. There is something you have need of, and the Lord wants to give it to you tonight.”

Feeling a little weak, I went to the front of the church. “Open your hands,” the man told me. I did as he said. He laid his hands on mine, and suddenly I opened my mouth and began to speak in a new language. It felt wonderful—not that there was any tingle or great surge of power in my vocal cords. I just opened my mouth and spoke in some language I never heard before.

I learned that what I experienced had been promised by Jesus to all believers in Acts chapter 1, where He said, “Wait for the promise of the Father . . . for John baptized with water, but before many days you shall be baptized with the Holy Spirit.” I had read that Scripture many times before, but never really knew what it meant. If the disciples needed this special power, then I surely did.

I began experiencing the other gifts of the Holy Spirit. Discernment, for example. I seemed to know instinctively what a person needed. And the gift of wisdom—supernatural knowing. All feelings of self-doubt and God-doubt were gone from me. The Lord spoke to me in dreams and visions. I was on a new journey with Him.

I longed for Jackie to find this same beautiful closeness with the Lord. It was as though I had gone from the hem of His robe right into His arms.

It was four long years later that Jackie received the baptism in the Holy Spirit, too.

“Oh Robert, why did I wait so long to open my heart to this deeper walk with God?” she lamented. “Why have I always been such a skeptic?”

“Jackie, honey, God loves skeptics.”

36

In the autumn of 1956 the Lord spoke to me in a vision. I had just bought a new portable organ—I hadn’t even taken it out of the box yet. The Lord told me to go to Marion, Ohio. In the vision I saw a beer garden in front of me, and I saw me playing the organ. A white Christian couple we knew named Toni and Mike were with me. After I saw the vision, I immediately went to the telephone and called Mike. “Can you and your wife come with me to Marion now?” They were at our door in less than an hour.

We arrived in Marion, Ohio, and found the beer garden that I had seen in my vision. We parked the car and I took my new organ out of the box and set it up on the sidewalk in front of the beer garden. We began to sing right there, and it wasn’t long before the people began to gather around us.

We were playing, singing, and telling the people about the Lord and His love for them when a young woman burst out of the beer garden and stomped over to where we were. “You’re making a lot of racket!” she shouted at me. “What are you, religious freaks?”

I smiled at her and reached for her hand. Shaking it, I said, “How do you do? I’m Robert and these are my friends Toni and Mike.” She stared at me and said nothing. “Do you have a favorite hymn?” I asked her.

Her face crumpled. “Ohhh . . .”

I began playing “The Old Rugged Cross.”

“How did you know I like that song?”

She gave her heart to Jesus that day on the street in front of a dozen or so of her friends from the beer garden. “I’ve needed God in my life,” she cried. “I tried church and I tried reading the Bible, but I never knew I could get born again with God living inside me. I just didn’t know!”

Others gave their hearts to the Lord that day, too. I preached quiet, simple messages about the love of God. We passed out some literature, and then when it was time to go, everyone had left except the young woman. “I’m an alcoholic,” she confessed. “What shall I do?”

Toni and Mike offered to take her home with them to live. She was stunned and took them up on the offer. She stopped drinking and was delivered from alcoholism and eventually returned to Marion and got a good secretarial job at the Marion Steam Shovel Company. Today she is married, has a family, and teaches Sunday school. Jesus gave her a new life that afternoon in front of the beer garden.

———

People gave us boxes of used clothing and canned food, used toys, shoes, and small household items to take to needy families on my trips.

I packed up the car in November of 1956 with all the boxes that had piled up in our front room, kissed Jackie good-bye, and left for South Carolina.

“Lord,” I prayed, “you show me where you want me to go. You show me.”

I got into Clinton, South Carolina, around suppertime. I stopped at a restaurant and was looking out of the window when I saw a group of workers coming in across the field from picking cotton. My heart raced at the sight of them. It reminded me of my childhood on the Beal Plantation. I put my fork down, wiped off my mouth, and hurried outside to meet them.

The eyes of one of the women met mine, and her face froze. She looked oddly familiar. Suddenly the woman screamed and threw her hands in the air.

“Robert!” she screamed. “Robert Sadler!”

I stared at her. Then in a rush I recognized her. “Tennessee!” I hollered, my hands in the air. “Lord A’mighty! Tennessee!”

We threw ourselves into each other’s arms, laughing and crying. O Lord, Lord! “How’d you recognize me, Tennessee?”

“I been astin the Lord what ever happened to that chile in the Big House, that poor lil ole chile called Robert Sadler, and Lord a’mighty, here you be!”

I couldn’t look at her enough, drink in her face. It was Tennessee all right. Older, but still beautiful. We talked and shouted and cried at the same time. I was afraid to ask about John Henry. “John Henry! Is he—?”

“He’s in the store! That’s our restaurant,” she said, wiping her eyes. “We own that little store there.”

“But I was just in there eatin supper!”

“It’s John Henry be doin the cookin!”

I stayed with Tennessee and John Henry for a couple of days and even picked cotton with them. She introduced me to her children. Big strong sons, one light, one dark, both married and with babies of their own.

“Tennessee,” I teased, “you was one mean girl, yessuh, you was a mean one.”

Tennessee laughed. “You callin me mean? What about that Mary Webb? Now she be mean!”

We laughed. “She surely seem like she had no heart nohow.”

“But what about you, Tennessee?” I said, chuckling.

“Wal, I had to be mean, Robert. Them white devils woulda kilt me. But Jesus took the meanness outa me. I don’t hate Sam Beal, I don’t hate any of ’em. I feel sorry for em. I am happy and free in my heart—free and clear, praise God!”

“The way I sees it,” John Henry said over a spicy gumbo soup, “is the Lord have carried us this far, the Lord gonna carry us through to the end.”

They lived in a small wooden house behind the store, which John Henry had built himself. Though grey sprinkled through their hair and some extra weight was on their bodies, they were still filled with fire and drive. They had suffered more than many Negroes, and their love had survived the worst. What thrilled me the most was that they loved Jesus.

“You’d think old man Beal would drive me to the devil, but he drive me straight to Jesus, Robert. I jes knowed it had to be Jesus watching over us and helping us escape that place.”

John Henry told me his mama, Ceily, had passed on to be with the Lord just the year before. At the mention of her name, I could see her face so clearly before me that I could have reached out and touched it. I remembered that day in her cabin in the slave quarter when I asked Jesus into my heart. “John Henry,” I said, “your mama done took me through many a fearsome storm. . . .”

“She never forgot yoll, Robert. She often spoke of ye and prayed for ye, too.”

“I never forgot her, either,” I said. “She brought me to Jesus.”

John Henry told me that many of Beal’s slaves lived in the vicinity, and we went to visit some of them. Many I didn’t know by name, but they knew me. They remembered me as the dumb little old house boy. They didn’t speak of my turning Mitt and Waxy over to the lash, and they didn’t talk about those who died in the quarter. I visited their houses with their chairs and beds and bedspreads and dishes and china cabinets and radios and pictures on the wall, their refrigerators and stoves and embroidered towels and food in the cupboards and I became so overwhelmed I couldn’t help crying.

“Yoll go ahead and weep, Robert, them’s tears of joy.”

“Thas right,” John Henry said. “When one black man weeps for joy, we all sing hallelujah!”

Soon we were laughing. And crying.

We remembered the dirt floor shanties and what we came from, our lives that we didn’t share with others, with outsiders. We were ashamed.

“John Henry, where did Harriet settle at after she got off the plantation?”

“Harriet? She done live in Anderson till she passed about ten years ago. Her chillren still livin there. And Mary Webb, she be livin in Anderson. You oughter go see her! She still the same mean ole thing!”

Mary Webb in Anderson? I wondered if she’d throw something at me if I went to visit her. I chuckled to myself. I was surprised at the tender feeling I suddenly felt for her and I hoped she would never witness the sorry mess her kitchen became at the Beal house.

The reunion with Tennessee and John Henry and the others was like heaven. We were free and living in the world, and God had heard our prayers. When we had sung our songs in the clearing by the woods on the plantation—“Swing low, sweet chariot, comin for to carry me home”—we were singing about freedom. One of the old slaves now living in an apartment with an air-conditioner in the window told me, “Robert, you was nothin but a lil ole dumb chile and you never knowd nothing about the Underground Railroad, about white folks up north carin for the Negroes, and we never told you nothin. You was Massuh’s pet chile.”

Pet chile. He left out the word puppy. But even as he said those words, I felt an old familiar jab in the belly, the everlasting pain from wanting so much to believe Master Beal cared for me.

I could have stayed with John Henry and Tennessee in their pleasant little home indefinitely, but the Lord told me it was time to be moving on to Anderson. I left some boxes of clothing for them to distribute and was on my way.

I got to Anderson tired and wanting to sleep. Margie hugged me and kissed me til I thought I’d bruise. “I been missin yoll,” she cried.

“Me, too, girl.”

“Set yourself down and I’ll put on the coffee.”

I never got the coffee because I fell dead asleep on her sofa and didn’t wake up until the next morning. It was the Lord who woke me up. I sat up on the sofa looking around and trying to remember how I got here when the Lord told me to put on my shoes and drive to Railroad Street. “Yessuh,” I said.

I drove to Railroad Street, got out of the car, and began walking, not knowing where the Lord wanted me to go. All at once a woman across the road pointed at me and hollered, “Preacher! Preacher!”

I thought maybe she knew me from one of my street meetings and I waved back. At once she came hightailing it across the road. She was a short, heavy colored lady wearing a shawl and carrying a Bible. Puffing and out of breath, without barely saying hello, she explained all excited that she had seen me in a dream she had the night before.

“Me? You saw me?”

“It was you!” In the dream I had prayed for her, and after I prayed, she was healed.

“Do you need a healing, sister?” I asked.

She told me that she had been suffering with a sore on her head, and it was getting worse.

“I’m on my way to a prayer meeting on Railroad Street. Will you come?” she asked. We got into my car and drove to a wooden shanty where a group of women had gathered for prayer. The sister with the sore on her head took off her hat and wig and showed me the sore, big and festering. I prayed for her and commanded the infection to leave her.

Three days later I saw the woman, and she told me that it was healing and closing over. I saw her again in seven days, and it was completely healed. She came to Margie’s house, knocked on the door, and handed me a twenty-dollar bill. “This is for you, Preacher. God sent you here so I could be healed. I been savin this, and I want you to have it.”

A few weeks later, the Lord had me drive to Lowndesville, South Carolina, to hold some meetings. We met in the home of a woman named Myra, whose father was unable to walk and in a wheelchair. The Holy Spirit spoke to me and told me to tell the man to get out of his chair. I could feel the anointing of the Lord in the room. The man sat staring at me, not moving. I got up and walked over to him. “In the name of the Lord Jesus, get up and walk,” I told him. He rose from the wheelchair and walked across the room. Then he turned around and walked back again.

Everybody in the room started whooping and praising the Lord. When the old man rested, he got up and tried it again. He didn’t need any help, didn’t need a stick to hold him up, either.

The next day he was still walking. He went up and down in the yard and on the road. His daughter said she couldn’t get him to sit down. “He’s so glad to be walking, I can’t keep him down!”

The Lord Jesus never offers us anything bad. He hears us and he heals us and helps us through life with goodness and love on our side. The old man’s sons and daughters gave their hearts to Jesus when they saw what had happened to their father. Then his grandchildren gave their hearts to the Lord, too. I saw over a dozen people come to the Lord because of the miracle God did in that man.

37

When I arrived home Jackie told me Wilfred had taken a turn for the worse.

That night the Lord awoke me from my sleep and told me Wilfred was going to die. I jumped out of bed and pleaded with the Lord. “Lord, don’t take him yet! Please don’t take him yet.” I knew Wilfred’s soul wasn’t ready. I began to fast and pray for him.

After six days of fasting and prayer for Wilfred, I realized he’d have to be put in the hospital. “Give me a sign, Lord, that he has opened his heart to you and that he’s going to heaven. Please, Lord,” I prayed.

On the day he was to go to the hospital, the doctor came prepared to drug him in order to get him out of the house. Wilfred hated hospitals and thought all doctors were after him and trying to kill him. I refused to let them drug him. “Don’t you put a needle to him,” I insisted. “He’s going to go to the hospital nice, and he’s going to behave himself.” I dressed Wilfred and prayed for a miracle. To everyone’s amazement Wilfred went to the hospital without a single protest. Usually, if he had to leave the house, he would scream and kick and act crazy, breaking things and terrifying everybody. This time he was like a lamb. I knew the Lord had touched him.

When Wilfred died two weeks later, I had peace in my heart that when I got to heaven, Wilfred would be there, too.

The Pickings family asked us to remain on in the big house that had been his.

We missed Wilfred, though. We had gotten very attached to him, and it was lonely and quiet without him.

We started a little church right there in the house. We called our ministry Faith Mission, and we had meetings on Sunday and prayer meetings every morning of the week.

One morning Jackie and I felt especially impressed to pray for someone who felt lost and hopeless. The burden was so heavy upon us we continued long after our usual hour of prayer was over. We were praying for someone in particular, someone we didn’t know. Around noon I went outside to trim a little peach tree I had planted in the backyard. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a bum stagger by on the sidewalk.

The Lord spoke to me and said, “I’m going to save that man.”

“Praise you, Lord,” I said.

A few minutes later Jackie called me from the porch. “Robert! There’s a man here and he’s asking for prayer!” The bum I had seen on the sidewalk was sitting on the couch.

“I don’t know why I’m in this place,” he said.

“I know why you’re here,” Jackie said. “You’re here because we been praying for you.”

“Hunh?”

“All morning long we been praying for you without knowing your name or who you are, and the Lord sent you to us.”

The man’s name was Don. We prayed over him, and he asked Jesus into his heart. He had never felt the power of God before. I took him to the place he was living and he cleaned up and came back with me that night for a fellowship meeting. He became faithful attending every meeting, and the change in him was nothing short of miraculous. His days of bumming were long gone.

———

That winter I felt the Lord leading me to a large convention in Minnesota. Christians were coming from all over the country to it. Jackie couldn’t come with me because she was working and couldn’t get time off. I packed my grip, kissed her good-bye, and left for St. Paul, Minnesota.

I noticed a rattle in the engine of the car, but I didn’t pay much attention to it. The meetings in St. Paul were wonderful, and I experienced beautiful fellowship and a great move of God. When I was leaving, I heard a man telling someone, “I hitchhiked to this convention. I don’t know how I’ll get home.”

I said, “I’ll be glad to drive you home.”

“Are you sure? I live over two hundred miles from here!”

“That don’t matter. I’ll drive you home.”

The man’s name was Joe, and he was happy with my offer. We climbed into my car, along with a blind brother who also wanted to ride with me, and started on our way. As we drove along it started to snow and the car began to pop and backfire. I had to stop every few miles to pour gas into the gas tank because it was leaking. It began snowing really hard, and we just laughed and praised the Lord.

The snow came down harder and harder and the winds were blowing stronger every minute. It was turning into a blizzard, and the temperatures had plunged to 45 degrees below zero. After we had gone about 150 miles, the clutch gave out. I knew the transmission was gone, but the car kept moving so I didn’t stop. We drove until we saw a gas station, and I headed for it and pulled in. The man in the station said, “I’m afraid your transmission is gone.”

Not knowing what else to say, I said simply, “Well, fill it up with oil.” He filled it up; I started the car up, and away we went.

The snow was deep, and the roads were very bad. The snowplows hadn’t come out yet. I was a little concerned about getting stuck.

We made it to Bemidji, Minnesota, but I made a wrong turn. I tried backing up to turn around, but the car wouldn’t move. I tried again and again. It was useless. We were hopelessly stuck in the snow.

I looked at the face of the blind brother. He was calm and happy and trusting God. It was getting dark out, the heat in the car was poor, the storm was raging, and the sub-zero temperature was already numbing our bodies. What were we to do? Quietly, we began to pray.

The three of us were staring at the storm when we felt the car moving. I sat behind the wheel with my hands on my lap, my feet on the floor. The car was turning around!

The car made a complete turnaround, then rolled up onto the road again and faced the direction we had come. It was so incredible we began to shout and weep in amazement. God had worked a miracle!

When I started the car up, it ran perfectly, and I drove on to Joe’s house in Bemidji.

I left Bemidji with the blind brother and the snow flying and the temperature 40 degrees below zero. The car sputtered and popped, but we were trusting the Lord to get us back to Bucyrus. I stopped at the same gas station where we had stopped on our way to Bemidji, and I told the attendant the miracles the Lord had worked. He drained the oil out of the car, and the pieces of gears began to fall out. “Oh, don’t throw those away,” I told him. “I want to keep them as souvenirs.”

I drove that car all the way back to Bucyrus. Then I was home for just a couple of days when my sister Margie called to tell me that Corrie Moore was real sick, and I’d better come down to Anderson. The car still wasn’t fixed, but we left the blind brother staying in the house, and Jackie and I drove all the way to Anderson, South Carolina, without one single incident.

Corrie was in the hospital when we arrived. “How is she?” we asked Buck. With a flicker of agony, he said, “She just had both legs taken off.”

We went to her room and waited until she gained consciousness. She saw me and said with a smile, “I done come a long way—to this, Robert.”

“Jesus know, Corrie, Jesus know.”

“Robert . . . sing for me.” And I sang:

I say amen to Jesus

Amen all the time . . .

Margie came to me for a favor that week. She was shy about asking me at first, but then she came out with it. “Robert, can you do something for my pastor? He just has to get to Pompano, Florida, for a funeral and has no way to get there. Will you drive him?”

“Margie, my car’s transmission is out.”

“Please, Robert?”

“But, Sister, the car need repair. The transmission doesn’t work.”

“Won’t you please do it, Robert? Please?”

Finally I agreed. I had already driven the car almost 2,000 miles with the transmission gone. How much more grace was the Lord going to extend to me?

The car made it another 1400 miles without that transmission. Margie’s pastor marveled. “I reckon there’s a whole lot I don’t know about the Lord. But, brother, now I aim to get right and find out!”

Back in Anderson, Jackie and I prayed about getting home to Bucyrus. We didn’t have any money to have the car fixed. The Lord blessed us again and allowed the car to go another 800 miles back to Bucyrus. I still have the pieces of those gears as a remembrance of the miracle the Lord did with that car.

———

In 1960 I was in Leesville, Virginia, in the mountains driving another old used car, a station wagon. It was a warm Sunday morning, and the air was thick with the sweet smell of the forest surrounding the highway. I was looking for a church to attend. I stopped at a gas station to get some gas, and as I waited for the attendant, I saw about twelve men standing around there. I didn’t pay much attention because I was so intent on getting to church. I went on a ways, and the Lord spoke to me.

“Where are you going, Robert?”

“Why, I’m going to church, Lord.”

“Did I tell you to go to church?”

“Well, I—”

“Did you see those men back there?”

“Men?”

“Those men back there at the gas station aren’t going to church. Nobody will be preaching to them this morning, Robert.”

“Lord, forgive me,” I said, and I turned around and went back to the gas station.

“I’m a minister,” I told the owner. “Do you mind if I minister here this morning?”

“Why, go right ahead.”

Right there in the gas station we had a church service. I brought in my pump organ, and we sang and I preached. My congregation was those twelve men. Every one of them gave their lives to Jesus that morning. It was one of the best experiences of my life as a minister.

I stayed there for three days and nights, holding meetings every night. Word got around the mountains about the meetings, and the gas station was packed at night. Men and women stood outside to hear because there was no room inside, so we held the last meeting outside. The owner didn’t even try to wait on customers. The presence of the Lord was so powerful, he didn’t care about gasoline or oil or washing windshields. There was nobody who went away from those gas station meetings untouched by almighty God.

I laid hands on a rebellious young man who had been running away from God all his life. He began to quiver and shake when I touched him. Then he fell to the floor sobbing and asking God to forgive him of his sins and save him. Another man, who had been an alcoholic for almost thirty years, came forward crying and asking for prayer. I laid hands on him and began to pray for him. He fell on his knees and asked Jesus to come into his heart and save him. I believe God also delivered him from alcoholism that day.

If you’re wondering what I mean by “laying hands” it’s something you do when you pray for a person. You place your hand lightly on their head or their shoulder or arm and then you pray. You don’t always touch the person you pray for, but when a person comes up to you when you’re ministering at a meeting and they want you to pray for them, usually they expect you to impart a touch.

The Lord surely touched the folks at that Leesville gas station, a place I almost missed entirely. How very important it is to listen to the voice of the Lord. I can’t thank Him enough for turning me around that day.

I’ve had a lot of experience with car trouble—especially in the mountains, where my old cars would often break down. One time in particular, I was coming from Roanoke, Virginia, where I had held some meetings, and I was driving up a big mountain early in the morning. I got a few miles up the mountain and the car, the station wagon, stopped dead. I got out and said, “Lord, I’m not flagging anybody down. Thank you, Jesus. You know I’m here halfway up this mountain, and you know the car has stopped dead. Now I’m on a mission for you, so I’m counting on you to help me.”

With that, I pushed the car to the side of the road and pulled up the hood. Then I took out my organ and began to play at the side of the road.

The hours went by. I thought some cars that passed would drive right off the mountain, they were so busy staring at me. I couldn’t blame them.

By noon I was hot and thirsty, and there was no sign of help. I just kept praising the Lord, though, repeating over and over again to myself, “In everything give thanks.”

My faith grew by the hour, but my body grew more hot and weary. Shortly after 2:00 in the afternoon a car pulled up in front of my car and a white man in a shirt and tie got out. He said he’d help me.

He said I looked awful tired and hungry, and he insisted I get in his car and go with him to get something to eat. I got in his car and we went to a restaurant down the mountain. I didn’t want to eat, but I drank a large glass of water and some soda. The man told me I’d have to have a mechanic go up and fix my car.

“Oh no, I can’t do that,” I told him. “I don’t have money to pay a mechanic.”

“Well, if you’re going to get the car fixed, you’ll need a mechanic.”

The man took me back to my car and then was gone, and I never saw him again. I didn’t even find out his name. In about a half an hour two mechanics pulled up in a service truck. They didn’t even say hello to me; they just began to work on the car. I thought to myself, “Lord, I can’t afford to pay one mechanic—and you send two!” They towed the car over the mountain to the station to get parts. Then another mechanic came and helped them. They put in a new fuel pump. When I saw those three men working on the car, I grew even more nervous. “Now you’ve sent another one, Lord!”

Finally, twelve hours after the car broke down, it was in working condition again. Gulping and trying to act casual, I asked the men how much I owed them. They thought for a moment, and then one of them said, “Give us two dollars.”

Two dollars!

The Lord is my stronghold in time of need . . .

It was in June of 1963, and I had just turned fifty-two years old. I was holding some meetings in Vicksburg, Michigan. I overheard a woman telling another woman that her son was coming from Vietnam with his fiancée, and she wished she could paint her upstairs but just couldn’t do it.

“I’ll paint your upstairs,” I told her. “No need to pay me.” She couldn’t believe it. The next morning I showed up bright and early at her front door with my painting clothes and paintbrushes, ready for work. I painted her three bedrooms and hallway in two days and had a wonderful time of it, singing and praising the Lord as I worked.

The woman’s husband wasn’t a Christian. When he came home from work, he couldn’t believe his eyes. “You mean to tell me that you’re the preacher?”

He was amazed. He told me that other preachers had stayed in his house and hadn’t even made their beds after themselves. “And here you are, painting the place!”

That night he came to the meeting with his wife. The next night he came back again. The third night he gave his heart to the Lord. He had been a hardened and embittered man, and the Lord wanted to wash it out of him. His voice was humble as he told everybody in the congregation, “I know that the good Lord is real. I know it now.”

About a month later in the heat of the summer, the Lord put it on my heart to go to Detroit. I was near New Toledo when the Holy Spirit told me, “Don’t go the expressway. Go through the business section of the city.” I wondered why the Lord wanted me to go through all that traffic, but I obeyed Him. In a few minutes I saw a man hitchhiking. The Lord said, “Pick him up.”

I opened the door and invited him to get in. He got into the car, and I felt a cold chill go through me. Then I heard the Holy Spirit tell me, “This man has murder in his heart.” I gave him a quick glance and said as brave as I could, “Mister, you have murder in your heart.”

“Yeah? So what?” He didn’t even blink. “I’ll kill him! And nobody’s gonna stop me! I’ll kill him!” He pulled a gun out of his shirt and pointed it at me.

“You hear me? I’ll kill him!”

His gun didn’t scare me. I just kept on driving. “Thank you, Jesus,” I said quietly.

“What?”

“I was just thanking Jesus you got into my car,” I said.

“You was—what?”

“Thanking Jesus. Do you know who He is?”

“Knock it off.”

“Well, He knows who you are, and that’s what counts.”

I got it out of him that his wife had taken a lover, and that’s what he was so mad about. He was on his way to kill them both.

“Do you mind if I pray for you first?” I asked quietly.

The man was stunned. I began to pray, and before I knew it the man was crying and pounding his hand against the seat. “What are you doing to me?” he gulped.

“I’m not doing anything, son. Jesus is doing it.” I tell you, God worked a miracle in that man, and he gave his heart to Jesus right there in my car. I prayed for his wife and for the lover, too. I prayed they’d see the light and come to their senses. Adultery is an ugly toy of the devil. It wasn’t an easy thing for him to do, but he let me pray. When I finished praying, he gave me a hug and thanked me. “Tomorrow at this time I could have been behind bars—or dead,” he said. “Thank you.”

He was a changed man by the time we said good-bye. He felt relief and peace. He confessed he hadn’t been a very good husband and that he wanted to make a new start.

When I left him a couple of hours later, I turned the car around and went back home to Bucyrus. I knew God had completed what He had wanted to do on that trip.

———

One evening in late autumn of 1963, Jackie and I were sitting in our living room in Bucyrus reading the newspaper together. It was quiet except for the purring of cars as they passed by the house and the ticking of the old Seth Thomas eight-day clock on the mantel.

“Look at this!” Jackie pointed. Holding out the section of the paper in her hands, she showed me a short article about a small Baptist church that had been dynamited by the Ku Klux Klan in Mississippi.

We prayed for the people there, and then I was quiet. I saw a look in Jackie’s eyes, the look that said, “I know what you’re thinking.”

“Yes, honey,” I said. “Those people will be needing help building a new church. I better get my things together.”

The next day I left for the little town in Mississippi, taking with me boxes of used clothing, canned food, and my tools and work clothes. As soon as I got there I started in to work. I hauled debris, unloaded wood, drove nails, laid concrete, painted, varnished, cleaned, hauled, and did whatever else was needed.

I worked hard, but the people were closed off to me. I realized they were scared. NAACP leader Medgar Evers had just been murdered in the driveway of his home in Jackson, Mississippi. No one had been killed in the blast of this church, not like the Sixteenth Baptist Church in Birmingham, where four girls were killed attending Sunday school. The people were afraid of strangers and didn’t know what would happen next.

I discovered another little church not far from the one I was helping to rebuild, and I felt led to go and visit the people there. What a difference! They welcomed me with open arms and bubbled over with the joy of the Lord. They just weren’t worried about the Kluxes or about what the white man could do to them.

One old man named Jack had joined the March on Washington with Dr. King and he told me, “I believe in standing up, yes I do, I believe in being a man. I believe I has a right to be a man. But if I fill my body and my mind with hate, then I ain’t a man no more. I know good and I know bad, and one thing I knows for certain—God is good. I knows it. And I know He loves me and my black skin. Ole devil try to beat the faith outa the colored Christians, and it jes make us tougher.

“I done see’d hate, Robert, and I knows what killing is. Ain’t nobody who can tell me what I don’t already know about hate. The young folks say it’s just begun, but I say I’s see’d enough. Hate don’t make nothin better nohow. It makes a man sick and despiseful.”

I stayed there for a couple of weeks in Jack’s shanty with him as I worked on helping to rebuild the church down the road. I was with him when I heard the news that President Kennedy had been shot and killed. “The only answer for America is Jesus,” Jack cried. “Young folk think religion is jes for the old folks; they think we’s foolish. They never tasted of how the Lord can change a man’s whole life—how He can bind the hurts with love.”

The whole country cried when President Kennedy was shot, and we wondered what would happen now that all the land was covered in tears.

The church held an ordination service for me. Old Jack said to me, “Just remember, Brother, at ordination we see how small we are—not how big.”

In the sermon the preacher said, “When a man remember he not a god, then he can see God.” He was direct and plain. “Black folks standin around preaching at one another. First one preach and then the next one preach. Nobody gets nothin from nobody cept pride and bluster. That’s why God calls and sends certain ones—certain ones to lead His people right, certain ones who knows Him. Is you one of them, Robert Sadler?”

I was five years old again with no words in me.

The preacher went on. “They’s too much talk about hell and damnation and not enough about love and salvation. If folk cain’t see the love of the Lord in us, then we’s got no right to be preachin about Him. Anybody can preach! Why, we’ve heard men preachin mighty fine sermons raisin’ the rooftop with their fine voices, and they ain’t preachin about no God we know of. They’s jes talkin. I’d rather hear the truth through the mouth of a mule than hear a lie through some ole fine orator, brothers.

“Show them Jesus. Show them bout His love, bout how He care. Bout how He died for the black man and every man. Show them bout how He makes strength out of weakness and bout how He makes beauty out of filth. Show em how He turns it all around inside a man and makes a new man where there was nothin but evil before. Oh, great God A’mighty! Show ’em bout Jesus!” Then he began to sing, and the congregation responded right along with him.

He took my feet from the miry clay,

“Yes, He did! Yes, He did!”

And placed them on the Rock to stay,

“Yes, He did! Yes, He did!”

I can tell the world about this,

“You shure can, Revrund!”

I can tell the nations I’m blest,

“Amen, Lord!”

Tell them that Jesus made me whole,

“Well!”

And He brought joy, joy to my soul.

Oh, my Lord, did just what He said,

“Yes, He did! Yes, He did!”

He healed the sick and raised the dead,

“Yes, He did! Yes, He did!”

It would be hard not to dance or clap in the enthusiastic and spontaneous joy that filled that little church. It was like heaven came down and partied with us that night.

———

People have come from all over the country to stay in our home in Bucyrus. Our doors have always been open to any traveler. There is enough room for at least twenty people comfortably, and often there have been more than that staying with us. Ministers began coming from all over the country to stay and take part in the meetings and to accompany me on my travels.

It would be close to impossible to put in a book the many miracles that God has done during my ministry. I have traveled to dozens of cities and towns, hundreds of churches and fellowships, and the Lord has done so many wonderful things that there wouldn’t be space to tell it all. In fact, it’s not easy to choose which things to tell and which to leave out, but I’ll do my best to tell what I can.

I took a white minister from Aurora, Illinois, with me on one of my trips to Anderson, South Carolina, in a good used car Jackie and I were finally able to buy. As we drove along, the Holy Spirit told me to take the next exit on the highway. I did as the Lord said, and the man with me got all excited. “Hey! You took the wrong turn! This isn’t the right way!”

I told him, “The Lord told me to turn off the highway here.”

“Brother, you must be mistaken. This isn’t the way to Anderson!”

His protests didn’t bother me much because I was used to hearing the voice of the Lord, and when I knew the Lord was speaking to me, I tried to obey immediately. I just drove along quietly, listening for the Lord to give me further instructions.

“Brother Bob! I’m telling you this is the wrong way! We won’t make it on the gas—”

I looked at him out of the corner of my eye, smiled, and said, “There’s no cause for you to get all flustrated. The Lord knows what He’s doing.”

We came to the end of the road then. It was a dead end. Before us was swamp and thick, dark woods. Then the Lord said to me, “Get out of the car, and take those clothes in the back with you.”

I did as the Lord said and began unloading the boxes of used clothing. The minister with me was so disturbed I thought he was going to have a fit!

I saw a run-down shack of a house about 200 feet from the road and made my way through the weeds and brush to it. An old man, dirty and sickly, was sitting on a chair. I greeted him and said, “Would you be needing any clothing?” His eyes grew wide. He was so thin and sick-looking, I wondered how long it had been since he had eaten anything. I soon realized that he was not alone in the house. A woman came out of another room with about six small children, all thin, dirty, and sickly looking.

My minister friend was still down the road by the car fussing to himself. When I didn’t return, he came looking for me and found me sitting in the dim, filthy shanty with this poor and sickly family, telling them about Jesus.

“We’ll be staying here for a while,” I announced.

The minister friend was all flustrated and upset, but he set himself down and we stayed with those backwoods people for a couple of weeks. They needed to be nursed and nourished back to health. Besides that, their shack was almost falling down. We cleaned up the tiny shack and then made a clearing to get a car through to it. We fixed the roof, bathed the children, gave haircuts, clipped toenails, cooked, sewed, plastered, painted, and did some rebuilding. Each day as we worked, their health seemed to improve. They were astonished to receive the boxes of clothing and household goods. The children owned no toys, and we were able to give them three boxes of toys. It was something.

After one of the first days with them, my minister friend went walking in the woods. When he came back, his face was swollen and red, and I knew he had been crying. He hugged me and broke down in sobs.

“Oh, forgive me, brother,” he cried. “Forgive me. I have never been so touched and so blessed in all my life.” We were able to lead the entire family to Jesus. They were also a sight better appearing when it was time for us to leave. The Lord spoke to me and told me to give them my car.

“Your car? You’re giving us your nice car?”

“And she run good, too,” I said, smiling.

The man was so thankful, he couldn’t get over it. Now he could get work in town and they’d get back on their feet again. Thank you, Jesus!

My friend and I took a bus back to Bucyrus. He didn’t complain once.

We were at a meeting in a church outside of Minneapolis, and a young man came up to me and said, “The Lord told me to offer you my camper.” He said I could have it for very little. After speaking at some churches in the area, I had one hundred dollars, which I now offered to the young man. “I’ll sell it to you for one hundred dollars,” he said. So I left Minnesota driving a fancy, homemade pickup camper. It was like driving a little house around with me. I thanked God with all my heart.

38

For a long time I had a deep burden in my heart for Native Americans. I had been on a reservation a couple of times, and I never forgot the faces and the hungry hearts. When a black brother by the name of Jesse from Minneapolis invited me to go to Canada to an Indian reservation there, I jumped at the chance. We planned to hold tent meetings and teaching sessions, and I could hardly wait.

We stopped in Detroit on the way to Canada and I visited my sister Janey. She was hard and bitter and had little to say to me.

In Detroit someone broke into my camper. When I discovered it, there wasn’t a spec left in it. My organ, clothing, money, Bible, and even my dirty laundry were all stolen.

I didn’t dare complain to the Lord, so I began to praise Him for it. “If you allowed all my belongins to be stolen, then that’s your business. So I thank you for it, Lord.”

The pastor of the church where I spoke that evening asked me to stay and minister for a couple of days. I didn’t have enough clothes to wear, but Jesse and I talked it over and we decided to stay anyhow. During the meeting a woman prophesied over me, saying that the Lord was going to replace my loss and double my portion. She didn’t even know about the camper being robbed.

That night an offering was taken for me, and then the next afternoon a brother handed me a check and said, “The Lord wants you to have this.” We ministered in other towns on our way to Manitoba, and by the time we reached the border I had enough money to buy a much better organ than I had before, and some brand new clothes.

Finally Brother Jesse and I made it to Winnipeg, driving through Wisconsin, Minnesota, and North Dakota. We had to leave the camper in Riverton, Manitoba, and take a small boat with an outboard motor across Lake Winnipeg to Bloodvein. By the time we got our things in the boat, the water was nearly at the top edge of the boat. I climbed in and thought for sure we’d sink. I fixed my eyes on the other side of the lake and prayed us across. Jesse saw me staring at the other side. “Brother Bob,” he laughed, “we aren’t going across the lake, we’re going about 15 miles up the lake. . . .” My heart jumped into my throat.

The waves were high and water splashed into the boat and all over us and our equipment. I seemed to be the only one worried. I never swam a lick in my life. Were we going to land on the shore or the bottom of the lake? I prayed, reminding the Lord that I had lots more work to do before I came home.

The water inside the boat was getting higher and higher. I thought of a verse in the 91st Psalm, “For he shall give his angels charge over thee, to keep thee in all thy ways.”

“Lord, send some of those angels over here to this here lake,” I prayed. Then I thought of another verse in the same psalm, “He shall call upon me, and I will answer him: I will be with him in trouble; I will deliver him.”

Jesse was singing at the other end of the boat.

Wonderful, wonderful, Jesus is to me;

Counselor, Prince of Peace, Mighty God is He,

Saving me, keeping me . . .

My, he looked peaceful. I decided I needed some of that peace, too. I began to sing along with Jesse, even though we were getting more soaked by the minute. Then, seemingly out of nowhere, another boat pulled up alongside us. Our equipment was loaded into their boat. By this time the water inside our boat was already past our ankles. The boat rocked and jerked as our heavy equipment was removed. Jesse waved and shouted something to the men, and we continued on our way without our equipment. The water stopped splashing into the boat, and we bailed out what we could with coffee cans. Jesse and I started laughing. The Lord had come to our aid out in the middle of Lake Winnipeg.

We finally arrived safely at the Sioux Bloodvein reservation. The land was all rock. The people looked at us with expressions as cold as the rock. I could feel the hostility in the air.

There were only a handful of Christians and a little chapel. We met in the chapel the first night.

The following day I began to take sick during the morning meeting, and so I excused myself and went outside. I fell down on the hard rock earth and couldn’t move. I felt as though my body was in a vise. I knew it was an attack of the enemy, but I didn’t know what his purpose was. I would soon find out.

In about an hour the meeting was over, and a couple of the Native American Christians found me lying on the ground. They called Jesse and he came running. Jesse is a very large man and very strong. He picked me up in his arms and carried me back to the chapel. He laid me down and felt my pulse. There was none. He listened to my heart and there was no beat. I had stopped breathing. He called for the believers to come, and they gathered around me and prayed. The Lord told Jesse to command the life back in me in His name. He did and before long my pulse returned and I began to breathe. I didn’t know I had been raised from the dead.

The evening came and the believers gathered around me again and prayed over me. Then I slept until the next morning.

I awoke feeling worse than when I fell asleep. The pain in my body was terrible. I rose up out of the bed, using every bit of strength I had. “Devil, you liar. In Jesus’ name, I will get off this bed and minister to these people who need God.”

By the time I got to the chapel, I thought I might die. I don’t believe I’ve ever been so sick. When the people saw me there, they praised God like never before.

“This is a spiritual battle,” I explained. “And Jesus has already won.”

They continued to pray over me, and I could feel the hand of sickness and death leaving me. The Holy Spirit moved wonderfully on that reservation. Young people, old people, and children started coming to the meetings. Pretty soon there wasn’t enough room in the chapel for everybody, so we began to use the big meeting tent. Then the tent got too small.

Each day there were healings and deliverances among the Native American people. Demons that had held families for years and years were cast out, and the families were set free in Jesus. A little baby who was deformed pitifully was brought forward to the front of the church one evening. We prayed over her, and right before our eyes we saw her little arms and legs straighten out, and she was made whole.

God worked on the reservation like we never dared to imagine He would. We fasted and prayed and God broke many of the chains that had held the people in darkness.

There were those, though, who in spite of seeing a man raised from the dead and many other miracles, still didn’t believe.

———

Up until now I had not told anyone about my being a slave. Even Jackie knew very little about it. It was not until 1964, when I was fifty-three years old, that I could finally bring myself to talk about it openly. I was in a meeting in Memphis, Tennessee, and the congregation was singing “Wonderful Words of Life.”

I felt my heart begin to pound rapidly, and I could once again see the parlor in the Big House. I could hear Juanita playing the piano and singing. Then Virginia, Ethel, and Thomas joined in while I stood outside the door sucking on my shirttail.

Sweetly echo the gospel call, wonderful words of life;

Offer pardon and peace to all, wonderful words of life.

Mary Webb was up in the kitchen preparing lemonade and little cakes for the family. In the children’s room Harriet was rocking baby Anna to sleep. It was hot, and my toes curled under the soles of my bare feet. That music was mighty pretty. Mighty pretty.

Jesus only Savior, Sanctify forever;

Beautiful words, wonderful words,

Wonderful words of li-i-ife,

Beautiful words, wonderful words,

Wonderful words of life.

Almost forty years had passed since I ran away from the Beal Plantation. Yet it all flooded back that day in Memphis. I felt tears come to my eyes. Something inside me broke. When the congregation finished singing, I rose to my feet.

“I want to tell you about the first time I ever heard that song. . . .” I was able to talk about my childhood and about being a slave. I talked and talked. It all came out, easier than I thought it would.

Back in Bucyrus, I felt God wanted me to put my story in a book, and I began to seriously pray about it.

“Oh girl,” I said, taking Jackie in my arms, “I know I am not a fancy preacher man. I’m a simple man. If I can minister encouragement, faith, and love to the people, then I’m grateful.”

I grinned at her and she grinned back. “You are the most wonderful man in the whole world, that’s what you is.”

My speech problem never completely left me, and I still mispronounced words, but I decided since it was the Lord who chose me to serve Him, it was His problem and not mine.

“I’m not capable of preaching no fancy sermon, Jackie. I just gives what God puts in my heart.”

“And Robert, honey, that’s a powerful lot. You bet.”

———

In 1965 I took a trip to Anderson. The Lord blessed me with some extra money, so I was able to buy Margie a stove. She was so pleased you would have thought I bought her General Electric itself. I visited Corrie in the rest home and took Buck with me. She sat there without any legs and half dead and praised the Lord with all her might. It made me see how the real world is a spiritual world, not the one we see with our eyes.

I went to Clinton to see Tennessee and John Henry. They were so poor I asked John Henry to come north, and I would try to get him a job in Bucyrus or Detroit. He smiled at me with a wise old smile.

“Move up north? Move up north?”

“Yes, John Henry, you can make a living up north—”

“Now lissen hear, Robert, I ain’t studyin’ to move up north nohow. This hear South is mah home.”

“Yes, but you don’t make a decent wage—”

“The South is mah home,” he repeated. “Mah granddaddy was a slave, Robert, and his daddy served in the Civil War for this here South. My daddy served in the war in Europe for this here country, yes he did. He ate grits and gravy, and they sent his battalion out first to die. He come back, and he come back to the South!

“Robert, we was slaves. We and our people built and made this here South what it be. We made the South rich. Ah done give my life to this here land. I got me a shack and a store and some land. Ahm an old man now, but ahm astin you, you want me to move up north and live in a strange city with a lot of other poor niggers who don’t know nothin but farming? Robert, this here land you standin on now is my land. Ah done built the South. Me and our people. This here South is as much ours as it is the white man’s. Ain’t nothin gone git me to move and leave what’s mine nohow.”

With that, he stuck a plug of tobacco in his cheek, crossed his arms across his chest, and gave me a shove with his knee. It meant “Don’t mention it again,” and I didn’t.

39

In the spring of 1968 I took a white brother named John to Arkansas with me. I was enjoying the prospering of the Lord and had just bought a new suit of clothes and some new shoes. I was feeling so happy as we drove along, and John and I were praising the Lord together. In the distance I saw a man standing at the edge of the highway. He wasn’t hitchhiking, but I felt impressed to stop. John spoke up. “What are you stopping for?”

“I see a need,” I said.

I got out of the car and walked over to the man. He was dressed in shabby, dirty clothes, and his shoes were torn and without laces. I smiled. He was exactly my size.

“I don’t need no ride,” he told me.

“I know what you need,” I said. “Come with me.” I took him into the camper and dressed him up in my new clothes and shoes. First, though, I heated some water on the Coleman stove and gave him a bath, a shampoo, and a shave. When I finished with him he looked like a different man. John was sitting up in front and very annoyed. “What are you giving him?” he asked me in a surly tone. “He’s just a bum. He’ll probably sell those clothes.” Sometimes people just won’t listen to the Holy Spirit. I didn’t even bother to answer him.

When I had the man all cleaned up, the Lord spoke to me and said, “Give him one of those twenty dollar bills in your pocket.” When John saw me do that, he said loud enough for the man to hear, “He’ll just spend that on whiskey!” I took the man to West Helena, Arkansas, with us to attend the meeting that night and he gave his heart to the Lord during the singing. With tears running down his clean-shaven face, he confessed, “I was on my way to kill myself. I just didn’t have a thing in the world to live for. Now I can see that I have everything to live for. I’m going to live for Jesus!” That man is still going on with the Lord down there in Arkansas. He led his wife and four children to Jesus, too.

It was when we were driving through the green hills of Arkansas that we heard the news on the radio that Dr. King had been assassinated. I couldn’t drive farther. I felt the world turn inside out with its innards spilling out. I pulled over to the side of the road feeling sick and dizzy. My deaf ear began ringing and I could hear wailing and weeping from every corner of the South.

John, sitting next to me in the car, clicked his teeth. “Martin Luther King. He was a Communist, wasn’t he?” For a long moment I resented that man—not for his whiteness, but for his fool insensitivity. “John, you shure don’t know nothing, do you?”

The meetings in Arkansas were filled with crying, but we also could praise the Lord. This world is not our real home. After our meetings in Arkansas, I drove John back to his home and then went on to Anderson. Margie had taken sick, and I wanted to be with her. It was one of the last times I would see her alive. I drove along the narrow, hilly streets looking at the familiar little wooden houses, shingle or tar-paper covered, set right on the road. Roses grew over almost every one of them. Inside somewhere in every single house would be photographs of John Kennedy and Dr. Martin Luther King, either hanging on a wall or standing on a table, mantel, or dresser top. Dear Lord, we need heroes.

Margie’s older son, Alan, was at Margie’s house, come down from Detroit. I called Jackie and told her Margie was more sick than I thought, and she took a bus right down. We stayed with her for a week.

“You has did so much for me,” Margie told me in a weak voice. “All the boxes of gifts you send.”

“Now, Sister, don’t you remember the boxes you sent me while I was at school?”

“Robert, you a wonderful brother. And Jackie is a wonderful sister. You got a wonderful wife, Robert.”

I could see she was in pain. It hurt to see Margie suffer. She looked like Mama lying there, thin and worn. Her face was beautiful and radiant, though. “I’m strivin to make it at the narrow gate, Robert,” she said with a smile.

When I kissed her good-bye, we clung to each other. It was our last embrace.

Jackie and I drove to Detroit in the summer to see Janey. Alan told us that she had cancer and didn’t want anyone to know about it. Janey was living in a fancy house on the west side of town with a new husband who waited on her hand and foot.

I knew she was dying. For a brief time she mellowed when I walked into her big, fancy bedroom. “Robert, you was kind to send all those boxes and packages.”

“You was kind to me, Jay, remember?”

“None of the other brothers ever bothered with me.”

“They just afraid of that evil temper of yours.”

“I am a Christian, Robert Sadler!” she said indignantly. “I’ll have you know that I am saved and on my way to glory. Now get out of here before I run upside your head!”

She shook her fist at me, and I knew she meant business. “And don’t come back!” she shouted. At the door I turned, waved, blew her a kiss, and looked at her dear, angry face for the last time. She had lived a wild and sinful life and missed out on the peace and joy that she could have had living a Christian life. But she had never forgotten that night in Anderson forty years earlier when she gave her heart to Jesus. I never saw her or spoke to her again. She died a month later.

In 1970 one of the brightest lights of my life went out when Margie died. We went to Anderson for the funeral, and it seemed as though I was a boy again and Margie was not only Margie, but Mama, Ella, Pearl, and Janey, too. All my kin was gone now except for my brothers Johnny and Leroy, and I hardly knew them.

As I stood at Margie’s casket, I was overcome with a strange sense of loneliness. Many people had loved Margie and would miss her, but for me I knew there would be a hole in my heart all the rest of my life for the sister who held me and loved me when there was no one else.

I drove through town along Market Street and turned at a narrow, cluttered street called Church Street. It is the black skid row of Anderson. The Lord spoke to me and said, “Pull over here.” I thought it strange, but I obeyed and pulled over alongside a taxi stand. “Now take out your portable organ,” the Lord said. I did as He said and began to play right there on the sidewalk.

It wasn’t long before a small crowd of men had gathered. One tall, dark-skinned man was very upset at my playing. “You a preacher?” he snapped.

“Why, yes, I am.”

“I hate preachers!”

“Now, why would you hate preachers?”

“A preacher called me a rat!”

I raised my eyebrows. “And did you believe him? It’s plain to see that you are not a rat. A rat has four legs and you have only two.”

He stood staring at me, his mouth hanging open, and I played another song. After the song I said to him, “Will you get saved today?” He began to cry. He told me how he had been saved once, but he had fallen far from the Lord. He asked Jesus back into his heart that day.

I had a great time talking with the men on Church Street. The next day I went back again. Then the Lord spoke to me and said, “Rent a building on this street, Robert, so these men can have a place to come and call home.” I began looking for an available building and I found one. It was run-down and filthy. It would take a lot of work to clean it up and make a mission out of it. So I set to work painting, fixing, and cleaning, and as I worked the men came by to watch, and some of them would help me.

Finally one day the sign painter came and painted COMPASSION HOUSE on the window, the name I had chosen for the mission. “Lord, you always give me compassion,” I prayed. “I’m going to need lots of it now for these men.”

E. V. Adger, who owned and operated the taxi stand down the block, came over to see what was going on. “These men needs more religion and less whiskey; so you is in the right place, brother.” I discovered E.V. had been a slave on the Druid Plantation when I was a boy on the Beal Plantation. But we never talked about it.

In those early weeks of the mission, I saw the Lord touch the down-and-out men of Church Street with His hand of love, and men came to Jesus nearly every day. I played my organ, preached, and spent hours and hours talking with the men. Their response made me see the mercy of God in a new way every day.

40

Jackie had taken sick, and we didn’t think it was anything serious, but we prayed over her and she was anointed with oil. But then I got to feeling the Lord wanted her to see a doctor. We knew a Christian doctor in Upper Sandusky named Dr. Rhodes. He always prayed with his patients when he treated them. That’s the kind of doctor we wanted. He told Jackie she was a diabetic and her kidneys were bad.

Jackie had to go on a special diet and take insulin. She wasn’t happy about that because she loved to cook, and Lord knows, we both loved to eat her cooking. The special diet helped her, but in 1973 her health began to decline again. She was weak and her legs swelled up and she complained of feeling poorly.

The Lord spoke to me in a dream and told me I’d be preaching at Jackie’s funeral. I didn’t like that dream and I didn’t want to believe it. I called prayer meetings so we could pray Jackie back to health. But then we had to take her to the hospital because she had gangrene in her leg. It was spreading fast, and they had to amputate.

Jackie’s leg was amputated and she remained on the critical list for several days. I practically moved into the hospital to be near her. I fasted and prayed for days, and many of the Christians who knew and loved her joined me.

Finally, the dark cloud lifted and she began to recover. When she came home she was like a new girl. The droopiness was gone, and she was filled with enthusiasm and happiness. I bought her new furniture and made a beautiful bedroom for her in the music room. We celebrated her return to health by taking out the silver she had packed away for special occasions, and her good dishes, too. “I want you to enjoy these! We are using them every day!” I bought her flowers and when they wilted, I bought her more. I was so happy that the Lord had spared her and given her back to me.

She learned how to walk with a walker, and one day she said to me, “Honey, would you take me with you on your next mission trip?” I could have jumped with joy. “Would I!”

We had several months of traveling and ministering together. Everywhere we went the people showered Jackie with love and affection.

“Why didn’t I do this earlier?” she cried one night in my arms.

Driving through Anderson with Jackie at my side, we were silent looking at the land where cotton once was king. Now the cotton fields were used for cattle pastures. Giant, modern synthetic factories took the place of the old mills, and electronic and chemical firms stood where once there was wilderness. Prefabricated housing developments took the place of the unpainted shacks which were once strewn across the land. Anderson was now one of South Carolina’s five largest cities, called the “Electric City,” and known as the fiberglass center of the world. There were no more mules, no more overseers, no more slave quarters, and no more slave masters.

My mission on Church Street expanded. I rented another building next door, so there was a place for men to sleep, as well as a kitchen. By now the number of men who had come through our doors numbered in the hundreds, and we lost count of those who had gotten saved and straightened out their lives.

We often visited Buck and Corrie Moore. Buck was in his eighties and still walked every day to the rest home to see Corrie. In December of 1973, Corrie passed on to be with the Lord. She had suffered for many years after her legs were amputated, and even Buck said, “Thank God. She’s on the other side now. She’s free.”

Back home in Bucyrus, Jackie’s health began to slip, and she had to go back into the hospital. She was almost ready to be fitted for an artificial limb, but her kidneys gave out. I remembered the word the Lord had spoken to me about preaching at her funeral. I wept and prayed, begging Him to restore her. She grew worse, however, and when the doctor allowed her to come home, I knew it was to spend her last days.

Jackie went back into the hospital in March 1974. She lay in her bed praising the Lord and worshiping Him in the spirit. I sat with her night and day, and the last words I heard her say were, “Thank you, Jesus.”

On March 11, 1974, my Jackie died.

People came from all over the country for the funeral. I couldn’t shed one tear. Jackie was with Jesus. How could I dare shed a tear? Even though I ached for my wife to be near me, I couldn’t cry. A young girl from Cincinnati asked me, “Brother Bob, how can you be happy at a time like this?”

I answered her, “Child, it’s not happy I feel. It’s peace.”

I thanked the Lord for giving me Jackie for thirty-five years.

The funeral director was concerned about my having a plot next to hers. It didn’t matter to me. “I’ll never visit her grave—never,” I said. “I’m not visiting no grave, because my wife isn’t in the grave. She is in heaven. And I won’t be sleeping in a grave, either, so it don’t matter where we buried.”

Eventually my friends had to leave to get back to their families and I was alone. There was a hollowness in me without my wife, but I knew the Lord would carry me through and not allow me to sink into self-pity. I sat one early Sunday morning in the mission, unable to sleep as the years of my life flew around in my mind like sand shaking in a cup. I heard my little sister, Ella, laughing again. I saw Master Beal standing high above me with his shiny belt buckle and big boots, I heard Pearl’s voice singing, I saw the school in Seneca, and I saw Jackie smiling at me from across a steam-filled kitchen. All the songs and hymns I knew became one melody, and all the cries became one cry: Jesus.

I was watching the sun come up when a young man staggered in, drunk and mean. “Well, good morning, Evans,” I said. He grunted. “I see you’re out of the hospital.”

“Preacher, if yoll let me flop here, I’ll never tech another drink as long as I live. I promise.”

When the people began to file in the door, I went to the organ. I heard Evans stumbling around behind the curtain and I went in to help him. “Preacher,” he snarled, “how come you don’t give up on me? You been knowin’ me a long time and I ain’t got saved yet. How comes you still bothern with me?”

“Didn’t you know, Evans? Jesus loves you and I love you.”

It was time to begin the service. I opened the curtain, walked over to the organ, and began to play.

Robert Sadler went to be with the Lord at the age of seventy-five following a trip to Africa when he was struck with a virus. “Yes, Lord, amen, Jesus!” he exclaimed before he died.

Robert Sadler was born in 1911, near Anderson, South Carolina. His father sold him as a slave when he was only five years old to a plantation owner in the South. He remained on the plantation until 1925. After his escape from slavery he entered the ministry. He lived in Bucyrus, Ohio, but traveled extensively. He also ran a small mission called Compassion House in Anderson. The latter part of his life was as marked by buoyant liberty as his early years were by abject bondage. His life touched millions.

Marie Chapian has published over thirty books with translations in seventeen languages. She has an MFA in writing from Vermont College, has been a college adjunct professor of creative writing, and won the CBA Gold Medallion award and many other awards in both poetry and fiction, including nominations for a Pushcart Prize and the Pulitzer Prize. She is a popular speaker and radio and TV personality. The Emancipation of Robert Sadler was her first biography and full-length book. You can find her at www.mariechapian.com.